Divine Division, Divine Solidarity

Sermon on Luke 12:49-56

Psalm 80:1-2, 18 Hear, O Shepherd of Israel, leading Joseph like a flock; shine forth, you [who] are enthroned upon the cherubim. In the presence of Ephraim, Benjamin, and Manasseh, stir up your strength and come to help us. Restore us, God of hosts; show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.

Introduction

When I became Christian I received a real and living peace. But it wasn’t a peace external to my person and body in the world; it was a peace within. When I encountered God in the event of faith, something clicked into place, aligned in such a way that all the grooves and notches lined up right, my inner river began flowing as water does when unimpeded by obstacles. But on the outside, things took on a level of friction that wasn’t there before.

Even though my internal life was aligned resting in peace, my external life suffered misalignment. What used to work for me, stopped working for me. What was fine before, wasn’t fine anymore. What I dismissed or ignored, I saw. What never bothered me, provoked my empathy like a knife to the heart.

I could get off the PATH train and walk the pedestrian tunnels leading to the streets and not think twice of the house-less human beings lined along the walls in the warmth of those tunnels on a winter morning. But after encountering God? I couldn’t not notice; I couldn’t not see the profundity of our shared humanity. I could make a lot of money, dine and shop with the best of them. But after encountering God, it all felt wasted and pointless, wasn’t there something more to life? There were questions I refused to ask, that I pushed down, that I muffled and ignored; but after? They boiled and bubbled to the surface taking their worded revenge on my mind and heart and soul. The law was just me being nice…occasionally. In God? The law became something heavy, tattooed on my heart, there was more I could do, more I could give, more I could study, more I could read.

You see, while my internal life aligned and I rested my head and sleep at night, my external existential existence grew more challenging as a result of encountering God in the event of faith. Jesus changed my life; Jesus is changing my life; Jesus will change my life. I can’t go back to being fine with things the way they were, the status quo; I have no choice but to turn and walk against the crowd and not for my own self-righteousness sake but for the beloved of God.

Luke 12:49-56

“I came in order to bring fire upon the earth, and I desire that it were already kindled! Now, I have a baptism to be baptized, and how I am afflicted (unto sickness) until it may be accomplished! Do you have the opinion that I came on the scene to offer peace on earth? Not at all, I say to you; but rather a dissension. For there will be at this very time five in one household divided up into parts, three against two and two against three.” [1]
Luke 12:49-52

In this moment, Luke captures Jesus appearing contrary to common presentations of Jesus, even within Luke’s narrative. However, considering the thrust of chapter 12, there’s a strong uniting theme of crisis in divine encounter; not just a future forward event, but a here and now of the crisis caused by divine coming.[2] Jesus speaks of fire and baptism and the misguided assumption[3] that he was meant to bring peace on earth. All of this imagery speaks of a refining of those encountered by God in the event of faith.

Jesus corrects the assumption that if one decides to follow him, all will be well. Nuh uh, says Jesus. Think again. To follow Jesus adhering to his conception of what it means to be of God in the world will demand (nearly perpetual) confrontation and division with those whom you know who follow the status quo of the world and the kingdoms of humanity; even family.[4]

In a culture that not only supports but depends on a specific family structure (socially and religiously), Jesus informs the crowd that not even this institution is safe from divine strife and division and derision when it comes to solidarity with God.[5] In fact, it’s to be expected.

Division wrought by divine hand isn’t antithetical to the mission of mercy and justice in the world. It isn’t even antithetical to divine peace, even though, yes, Jesus says he’s come not to bring peace on earth. Jesus, God of very God, came to break up archaic, fractured, decaying, death dealing systems built and propped up by human hands. Thus, it’s not only the largess of the temple that is under fire, but also the fundamental building block of this socio-religious context: the family.[6] As people are set aright on the path of God, they are bound to…nay…they will participate[7] in the divine mission of mercy and grace and love and peace in the world for those who aren’t the privileged, powerful, elite, or those who are righteous according to the standard of the world. This means they will begin to reject the traditions and ideologies they were raised with, go against the grain[8] and, thusly, strife hits home.[9]

How is this division and dissension the means by which Jesus brings peace and justice and mercy and love and grace? It does this because it brings cool water to those little ones who are most thirsty. Because it brings revolutionary verve and life-giving liberation by pronouncing divine peace to those who are deprived of peace, love to those who are deprived of love grace to those who are deprived of grace, mercy to those who are deprived of mercy, life to those who are deprived of life…and so on. And once the captives are liberated, the captor is liberated, and therein is peace…true, divine, existential—in the fullest sense of the word—peace

Thus, Jesus exhorts the crowds to watch because they aren’t watching well enough. They see signs about hot winds and storms, but cannot see that the division following in Jesus’s wake is the judgment of God on the status quo[10] of human kingdoms bent on death and destruction, capitalizing on human bodies and lives.[11] This truly is a Lukan version of the divine Shema O Israel! Hear, O people of God look and see! God draws nigh!

Conclusion

To have peace with God is to have your inner life aligned to that which brings life and mercy and grace and love. The encounter with God in the event of faith in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit brings us out of our dead selves and rebirths us into our alive selves, those who see the world, feel its pain, carry its sorrow, celebrate its joy, and grieve its disasters and terrors. All the while never losing yourself into it. In this way is the peace of God surpassing all understanding, we become living and present participants of the divine mission of liberation to the captives in the world. Feelings all the feels and still getting up every morning because God’s mercies are new every morning. In our encounter with God in the event of faith in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit we are restored unto the light of God’s countenance, saved from the prison almighty king of autonomy and selfishism, and ushered into sharing that light.

But this doesn’t mean our journeys through the world will be easy, that our lives will burst forth with prosperity, that everything will come up roses and will go swimmingly for us. You can’t see and feel and sense the pain of others and not be impacted; you can’t see and feel and sense the pain of others and not say something, do something, change something and have it go completely unnoticed by the rest of your community who is doing things the old way, accepting what is as is, going along with culturally defined contextual reason. At least that has been my experience; and I wouldn’t change one iota of it. Divine solidarity with humanity and God wrought by divine division brought by love and mercy and grace means I’m on the side of God.

To follow Christ out of the Jordan to the cross means dying deaths all along the way: deaths of the self, deaths of toxic ideologies and worldviews, deaths of relationships. These deaths are not because you are so awesome or you follow God’s law perfectly or keep your self clean and pure from the rabble. You’ll suffer these deaths because you dare to love those whom the world deems unlovable, you will suffer these deaths because you dare to ally with those who are fighting for their right to live and breathe, who desire to exist as they are in their beloved beautiful bodies, who must resist power threatening life, survival, and thriving.

And in all of it, we go it not alone and of our own power, but we walk with Christ who stands in solidarity with us, who dies with us, and with whom and in whom we are resurrected. Therefore…Dare to love, Beloved, as you’ve been so loved by God.

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[2] Joel B. Green The Gospel of Luke The New International Commentary on the New Testament Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997. 508. “Assuming coherence, then, we should inquire into how this material advances the overarching theme of vigilance in the face of eschatological crisis. This is not a difficult task. The immediately preceding discourse section had drawn to a close with a primary focus on the basis of future judgment in present watchfulness and fidelity. From those images of future judgment, Jesus now tums to the reality of judgment already at work in his ministry.”

[3] Green, Luke, 510. “How can this be? Jesus’ question, ‘Do you think I have come to bring peace?’ underscores Jesus’ awareness that the presence of division and judgment will, for many, stand in stark contrast to what might have been expected of the divine intervention.”

[4] Green, Luke, 509. “As his present discourse, begun in 12:1, has already made clear, a decision to adopt his canons of faithfulness to God would require a deeply rooted and pervasive transformation of how one understands God and how one understands the transformation of the world purposed by this God. This would involve Jesus’ disciples in dispositions and forms of behavior that could only be regarded as deviant within their kin groups. Earlier Jesus had been concerned to prepare his disciples tor the persecution before the authorities that would result from identification with his mission (vv 1-12); now he maintains that his ministry has as one of its consequences the deconstruction of conventional family bonds.” So long Jesus of the “family values” variety

[5] Green, Luke, 509. “This message potentially serves an important apologetic function in community definition. Within a culture wherein kinship ties played so crucial a socio-religious role, a message such as this one might well be suspect. How could a ministry the effects of which include the dissolution of family ties be sanctioned by God? Jesus posits just such divisions not only as a legitimate consequence of his mission but as confirmation that he is caving out a divine charge.”

[6] Green, Luke, 510. “Again, the choice of the verb, ‘to complete,’ conveys the idea that Jesus is concerned in this co-text to stress the divine nature of his charge. Judgment, from this perspective. Is not a surprising consequence of his ministry and is not a contradiction of his mission; rather, it is integral to it. He had come as God’s representative to bring division, so the dissolution of family bonds (which, in the Lukan narrative, has as its consequence the formation of a new kinship group around Jesus) should be taken as confirmation that he is God’s agent and that he is bringing to fruition the purpose of God. Jesus’ phrase ‘from now on’ further locates the significance of the division Jesus describes within the interpretive framework of his mission; it is from this statement of his divine charge that division within families will take its meaning.”

[7] Justo L. Gonzalez Luke Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2010. 168. “This passage is the first of three sections that are apparently disjointed (vv. 49-53, 54-56, and 57-59). What holds them together is the theme of eschatological expectation, and how it must impact the Life of believers in the present. Eschatological hope is not just a matter for the future. If we really expect the future we claim to await, this should have an impact on the way we live in the present.”

[8] Gonzalez, Luke, 168. “Those servants who know what their master wishes will act differently than the rest. This will cause stress and division. It is as if in a parade some begin marching to a different tune. The rest-those who march to the common tune-will accuse them of upsetting the parade, and will seek to suppress or oust them.”

[9] Green, Luke, 511. “Thus, for example, Jesus’ communication of peace to the sinful woman from the city is accompanied by disapproval from his table companions (7:36-50). As Luke has continually shown and as Jesus has endeavored to teach his followers, the realization of God’s purpose will engender opposition from those who serve a contrary aim.”

[10] Gonzalez, Luke, 168-169. “The eschatological emphasis of the entire section now leads to warnings. The servants know that the master is coming. We know that the future belongs to the reign of God. But, given the potential cost, it is not surprising that we are strongly tempted not to see the signs of the new time that is emerging. To forecast the weather, one looks at the clouds and the wind. The same should be possible by looking at the signs of ‘the present time.’ There is a new order coming! But people refuse to see it, and seek to continue life as if nothing were happening. Hypocritically, although we know what the master wants. we find all sorts of reasons to continue living as if the present order were permanent. We all stand accused and are on our way to trial. We can continue insisting on our innocence, and face the judge and the ensuing penalty, or settle matters with our accuser before the time of trial.”

[11] Green, Luke, 511-512. “Jesus plainly regards the crowds not as deceivers or phonies but as people who ‘do not know.’ His question, then, is not why they say one thing and do another, but why they have joined the Pharisees… in Living lives that are not determined by God. Misdirected in their fundamental understanding of God’s purpose, they are incapable of discerning the authentic meaning of the signs staring them in the face. What signs are these? Others have been noted previously (cf. 7:21-22; 11:20, 29-32); here, the sign requiring interpretation is the reality of family division-itself a manifestation of Jesus’ divine mission and a portent of coming judgment.”

Posted on August 14, 2022August 11, 2022 by laurenlarkin 2

Love Loves = Love Shares

Sermon on Luke 12:13-21

Psalm 107: 1, 8-9 Give thanks to God, for God is good, and God’s mercy endures for ever. Let them give thanks to God for God’s mercy and the wonders God does for God’s children. For God satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.

Introduction

If you’re familiar with the Enneagram of Personality—the third sacrament of the Western Protestant tradition, replacing the MBTI[1]—then you may be aware of the “vices” and “virtues” associated with each of the nine “types” or (how I learned to refer to them) “languages”. If you aren’t familiar, here they are:

Ones: Anger/Serenity
Twos: Pride/Humility
Threes: Deceit/Honesty
Fours: Envy/Equanimity
Fives: Avarice/Non-Attachment
Sixes: Fear/Faith
Sevens: Gluttony/Constancy
Eights: Lust (Excess)/Innocence (Newness)
Nines: Sloth (Self-forgetting)/Right Action[2]
https://lesliehershberger.com/enneagram/enneagram-vices-and-virtues/

While a discussion about the Enneagram is a good time, that’s not the topic of this sermon. So, what I want to bring your attention to is that I, according to the professional Enneagram test, am a very strong 5. Look at that list again…

Fives: Avarice/Non-Attachment

According to the Enneagram, my virtue is “non-attachment” meaning, I have the uncanny ability to observe and watch without my own personal investment. Ah, but my vice! Now that’s a fun one: avarice. This is from the latin: avaritia; meaning: greed, miserliness, stinginess, rapacity (which is just another juicy noun). So, this means that I can hoard, with the best of ‘em.

While most people associate “greed” with “money” it isn’t strictly limited to cash and its root-of-all-evil forms. For us 5s, avarice shows itself in the way we will acquire information (by reading, observing, data collection, watching, waiting) and then never, ever, ever sharing it. Ever. (Unless one has a dissertation deadline, then we will—BEGRUDGINGLY—share it; and we will complain the entire time especially as we didn’t have time to read that stack of books of quinary sources.) We even collect and save up our emotions (at least our outward expressions of emotions); yes, pray for our partners. I can save treats for myself for year…s.

So, looking at our gospel passage; I felt a bit dragged, the shadow of divine shade being thrown in my direction. What’s so wrong with storing up stuff? And sitting on it? Keeping it forever and ever? And ever?

Well, according to Jesus, Luke, and my daughter at three: sharing is caring.

Luke 12:13-21

And [Jesus] said to them, ‘Perceive and be on your guard [away] from all avarice because one’s life is not abounding out of possessions for them … And [the man] sad, ‘This I will do: I will pull down my storehouses and I will build great houses and I will bring together there all my grain and goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods being laid up into many years; you rest, eat, drink and feast.” But God said to him…[3]
Luke 12: 14, 18-20a

Luke tells us a man from the crowd demanded[4] Jesus settle a dispute about inheritance between him and his brother. I won’t vilify this man; Jesus regularly displayed great power, authority, wisdom, and justice; why not ask him to arbitrate the matter? [5] And Jesus’s response isn’t to condemn, but to beg off, uh, comrade, who appointed me judge and distributor between you?[6]Jesus isn’t here to meddle or be concerned about the finances between two brothers; this private realm of who gets what from dad isn’t the realm of the justice of God.[7] When Jesus responds the way he does, he distances himself between the justice of the kingdom of humanity and the justice of the reign of God.[8]

This distinction between kingdoms is why Jesus uses this moment as a teaching moment. In response to what seems like a basic and common-sense request for arbitration, Jesus opens up this teaching moment by warning the audience to perceive and be on your guard away from all avarice because one’s life is not abounding out of possessions for them. To the man demanding his part of the inheritance and to us, this correlation of what’s rightly mine to avarice feels extreme. It should feel extreme. Jesus is literally correlating this man’s withheld inheritance as greed because of the way inheritance functioned(/s?) in society. It was a means to keep wealth in one family and it advanced social standing, thus access to power and privilege.[9] Thus, understanding the conflict necessitates taking seriously all that Luke has told us thus far: the Good Samaritan, Mary and Martha with Jesus, the Lord’s Prayer, the Midnight Bread Ride… Sharing is caring.

Jesus continues with a parable. (The parables are always encounters with God; stories change us.) So, Jesus tells a story: A man, already quite wealthy, decides to tear down the structures he has to build bigger structures to store his grain and goods (perishables and non-perishables).[10] As he tells himself all is now well and he has enough and can just kick it, rest, and feast, God shows up. And rather than applaud this man’s problem solving and saving frugality, God calls this man a “Fool” (lit: without reason, perception) because one’s life isn’t secured in accumulating[11] and storing up material goods[12] but in God.[13] God asks the man, These things you collected up, when you die, whose will they be? Jesus concludes the parable with a summary: those who store up for themselves, are not rich in God.

Conclusion

There’s a distinction between what Joseph, the patriarch of Israel, did way back in Genesis and what this man did. Is God against big harvests and storing grain? No.[14] The orientation of the action matters. So, the distinction is located in the orientation of the person. Joseph stored up grain for people; this man stored up grain and goods for himself.[15] The man literally financially impacted the village(s/?) and the village people around him with this decision.[16] As long as he has his, nothing, he believes, can bother him; he was safe by his own hand and cunning. But he was dead in the midst of living.[17]

Being orientated toward both perishable and imperishable material goods, collecting them up, hoarding them in silos and safes, for himself, rendered this man not safe from calamity, but thrust into it. Hoarding these resources for himself, he put himself directly in harm’s way, because he forsook his neighbor, the very person who assisted him in his accumulation of wealth and the very person whom he is now depriving of vitality.[18] Truly, resting your hope in your saved-up resources isn’t wise, it’s foolish, because those things can’t bring life, only God can. [19]

Luke has been driving home the same message, week after week after week: do not orient toward that which brings death but that which brings life. This story, the gospel, isn’t about me and mine, it’s about you and yours. This is the orientation on the one encountered by God in the event of faith. From each of our perspectives, it’s always you and yours—it always has been. When we turn in, when we pull away, when we take for ourselves, when we make material goods our priority in order to save, secure, comfort ourselves, we turn from God because we’ve turned away from others. Even as Protestant as I am, even as firm as I am on the doctrine of justification by faith alone, in Christ alone, by the power of the Holy Spirit alone, there is no way on this green earth, that this entire encounter with God is for me alone. If a Christian’s theology, philosophy, ethical posture, political theory, and economic practice is about me and what I (alone) can get and keep to myself, then I must ask: does that person follow the Christ?

When we pull apart from each other, when we turn in on ourselves, when the world orbits us alone, when we think we can capture and hold Jesus (and God) to our whims and fancies as best suits us, we render ourselves dead—living but not alive—isolated and alone. But. But when we hear our names called by Love, and we turn and see Love loving us by sharing theirself with us and loving others, we are brought into the fulness of life out of death, given resurrection now as we are swept up in the majestic, life-giving momentum of divine Love unleashed into our hearts, around our bodies, around each other yoking us together. Together we laugh, we live, we love, and as we love, we share: we share our joy, we share our sorrow, we share our need, we share our fill, we share our life, we share our space, our time, and energy… because, to quote Jesus, Luke, all the prophets of Israel, and 3yo Liza herself: sharing is caring.

Because Love loves and Love shares.

[1] Myers Briggs Type Indicator

[2] Taken from: https://lesliehershberger.com/enneagram/enneagram-vices-and-virtues/

[3] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[4] Aorist Active Imperative even if addressed to a superior carries a command even if we add in the necessary gloss of hierarchy in terms of referential plea. See also Green, Green, Luke, 488. “He addresses Jesus as ‘teacher,’ acknowledging Jesus’ authority to render a decision in his case, but his is less a request, more a directive. He knows already the ruling he expects and needs only for Jesus to place on it his imprimatur.”

[5] Cardenal, Solentiname, 343. “‘The man saw that Jesus was just and that’s why he wants to set him up as a judge. But he didn’t know that Jesus’ justice was another kind of justice, revolutionary justice. Even now there are Christians who think that Christ’s justice is the justice of capitalism. The Chilean military junta says it’s restoring Christianity, because it’s restoring private property.’”

[6] Cardenal, Solentiname, 343. “LAUREANO: ‘He didn’t come to divide up wealth, to create capital.’”

[7] Ernesto Cardenal The Gospel in Solentiname Trans. Donald D. Walsh. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010. 342. “WILLIAM: ‘He didn’t come to distribute the riches; it’s up to society to do that. And the sharing ought to be done among everybody, not just between two. In that sharing they asked Jesus to do, the rest were left out. They ask him to sanction private property, the inheritance laws, the status quo. He refuses, he hasn’t come for that. On the contrary, he’s come to destroy that social order.’”

[8] Justo L. Gonzalez Luke Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2010. 157. “Amid a crowd that is amazed at the teachings and deeds of Jesus, which are no less than signs of the kingdom of God, this man is concerned about his own wealth, and about how to deal with a brother who may be withholding what belongs to him. For him, Jesus is an opportunity to validate his claim to an inheritance. But Jesus will not be manipulated. Rather than taking sides with the man-or even against him-he challenges the very basis of his request. Even though he calls the man “friend,” the Parable that follows clearly shows him to be a fool.”

[9] Green, Luke, 488-489. “‘Greed’ can denote the hunger for advanced social standing as well as the insatiable desire for wealth, though in Luke’s world these two images are intricately related. This is because, in his world, wealth is one of the several important units of exchange that could be translated into advanced status honor. Greed was widely regarded as a form of depravity, both in Jewish literature and in the larger Greco-Roman world. In the present case, the intertwining of community standing and wealth is obvious, since landholders (the rank this younger brother seeks to join in his request for Jesus’ intervention) enjoyed advanced status both in the village economy presumed here and throughout the Empire.”

[10] Green, Luke, 490. “The extent of this man’s wealth is suggested not only by Luke’s initial characterization of him as ‘rich.’ and not only by his capacity to undertake a building program without the benefit of the sale of this year’s produce, but also by his need to build bigger barns both for his grain and for the rest of his ‘goods’ (v 18). Given the subsistence economy of the peasant population surrounding him, this need for increased personal storage space not directly related to his agricultural activity must have seemed odd in the extreme, if not utterly monstrous.”

[11] Gonzalez, Luke, 159. “He is a fool because he forgets that, as is often said today, ‘you can’t take it with you.’”

[12] Cardenal, Solentiname, 344. “I: ‘According to Jesus, it’s not just happiness; it’s life itself that doesn’t depend on the things one may have.’”

[13] Gonzalez, Luke, 160. “But the man is a fool also in a deeper sense. He is a fool because he acts as if there were no God. The words in Psalm 14:1 immediately come to mind: ‘Fools say in their hearts, “There is no God” they are corrupt, they do abominable deeds.’ The fools to whom the psalm refers are not modem-day atheists, people who with their words deny the existence of God. They are rather people who, while still part of Israel, act as if there were no God. They do not care what God desires or commands, and the result is that they do abominable deeds. The man in the parable is a fool not only because he thinks he can secure his own life, but also because he acts as if there were no God. Presumably he is part of the people of God, and he knows that in the Hebrew Scriptures God repeatedly commends those in need to the care of those who have resources. This man knows this, and yet ignores it. This is what makes him a fool like those in Psalm 14. As Jesus says, he is ready to store up treasures for himself, but is not rich toward God.”

[14] Cardenal, Solentiname, 346.

[15] Gonzalez, Luke, 159. “Specifically in the first story, that the man is concerned only about himself and his possessions is e abundantly clear by the constant repetition of ‘I’ and ‘my.’ It is as if there were nothing else in the world but this man and his possessions. His greatest concern is that he does not know what to do with an exceedingly abundant crop; and his only solution is to build bigger barns so he can hold more and be more secure-so that ‘my’ soul may ‘relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ The problem is that nothing of what he has not even his soul-is his. It will be claimed when he least expects it, and all his plans will come to naught.”

[16] Green, Luke, 490-491. “Jesus portrays the farmer as engaging in self-talk. Although this might seem perfectly natural in this setting, persons engaged in soliloquy are consistently portrayed negatively by Luke (cf. 2:35; 5:21-22; 6:8; 9:46-47) In this instance, given the high level of interconnectedness characteristic of the village economy, it is worth asking why this farmer lays out a course of action in isolation from others whose well-being is affected by this decision. Additionally, the content of the farmer’s self-talk echoes similarly self-damning language in Jewish literature.”

[17] Cardenal, Solentiname, 344. “TOMAS: ‘A selfish person is dead in the midst of life.’” “‘But Jesus speaks of the one that “piles up riches for himself.” He’s not against big harvests, he’s against piling them up just for yourself. Like that man did: to keep them and rest and enjoy himself the rest of his life.’”

[18] Green, Luke, 491. “This farmer has sought to secure himself and his future without reference to God. This is the force of the label given him by God, ‘fool,’ used in the LXX to signify a person who rebels against God or whose practices deny God—a usage that coheres with the representation of ‘greed’ (v 15) as a form of idolatry. He did not consider that his life was on loan from God. Failing to account for the will of God in his stratagems, he likewise failed to account for the peril to life constituted by an abundance of possessions (v 15) and for the responsibility that attends the possession of wealth. He thus appears as one of several exemplars of the wealthy over whom ‘woe’ is pronounced in the Gospel of Luke (cf. 6:24). Such persons are not simply those with possessions, but more particularly those whose dispositions are not toward the needs of those around them, whose possessions have become a source of security apart from God, and, thus, whose possessions deny them any claim to life. The worthlessness of the farmer’s machinations is well represented in God’s parting words: These possessions, whose will they be now?”

[19] Green, Luke, 489-490. “…it means that this farmer is cast as one who has fallen victim to the polarity between an existence oriented toward life and one oriented toward possessions (v 15) or between a life in pursuit of the pseudosecurity resident in possessions (= ‘storing up treasures for themselves’) and a life in pursuit of riches vis-à-vis God (v 21). From the Lukan perspective, then, the wealthy farmer has failed to comport himself properly with respect to his possessions, for he has not entrusted his life to God and, as a con sequence, has not acted faithfully with respect to his possessions.”

Posted on July 31, 2022July 28, 2022 by laurenlarkin 0

Prayer of Love and Solidarity

Sermon on Luke 11:1-13

Psalm 85:7-8, 10 Show us your mercy, God, and grant us your salvation. I will listen to what God is saying, for God is speaking peace to God’s faithful people and to those who turn their hearts to God. Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

Introduction

Over the two decades being Christian I have had both robust and sickly relationship with prayer. On again, off again. It makes sense, it doesn’t make sense. I feel God’s presence; where’d God go? Yes! This is an important part of my Christian spiritual expression!; Gah! What the heck am I doing, this’s nuts. I wish I could claim a prowess and steadfastness in prayer, but I can’t.

I think the moments of prayerless malaise stem from my early Christian experience that’s marked by a heavy influence of both malnourished charism and ardent evangelicalism. My naiveté and lack of biblical and theological training was easily manipulated by friends who were more “experienced” in their journey with the Lord. I was influenced by fellow lay people taking matters into their own hand, and I loved the idea of being fueled with a spiritual power that was akin to wizardry. Faith, if you had enough, earned you things you wanted. Prayer—when prayed hard enough, hungry enough, claimed enough—produced the answers and results you desired.

My best friend at the time, the one who brought me to Christ, showed me that the faithful named and claimed things, believed beyond material evidence otherwise, and all of it applied to material things—even future spouses (as if they were things to get). According to this friend, prophecies in the first testament were “for me”, if you happened upon them playing bible-roulette. Words of wisdom and knowledge were events worthy of future expectation (things that will happen…if you don’t doubt). Prayer was a necessary expression of how much you wanted something and the more you prayed and the longer you prayed the more you showed God your commitment and faith and the more God would see to fulfilling your request.

When things didn’t go my way? Well…eventually this malnourished charism grew exhausting to uphold. I just couldn’t. With so many unanswered claims and prayers, I guess I was just a faithless person, maybe it wasn’t my thing. Thus, I’ve wrestled with prayer.

So, this week’s gospel, had me all:

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I’m truly human; I must both laugh and cry when challenged to confront some of my own spiritual trauma and walk through death to get to the other side into new life.

So, I’m asking: why pray? I believe Jesus shows the better way.

Luke 11:1-13

And it happened while he was in a certain place as he was leaving off praying, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, please teach us to pray, even just as John taught his disciples.” And [Jesus] said to them, “Whenever you pray you say, ‘Beloved Parent, let your name be purified; please let your kingdom come; please give to us our bread for the coming day in accordance with the day. And release from us our failures, just as we ourselves release all [people] owing to us. And do not lead us into calamity.”
(Luke 11:1-4)

The transition from chapter 10 (ending with “Mary picked out for herself the good part [and] it will not be taken from her whatsoever.”) to “And it happened while he was praying” feels like one of the worst transitions ever. But it isn’t. Moving from a conversation about what it looks like to be neighborly (having mercy) and to love God (choosing that which is living over that which is dead) to a conversation about prayer actually makes sense.[1] Orientation toward neighbor and God impacts the activity of our worship, and our worship impacts our orientation toward neighbor and God.[2]

So, Luke tells us this next event happened right as Jesus finished praying. One of Jesus’s disciples asks him for a prayer like the other rabbis give their disciples.[3] So, without missing a beat, Jesus says, Okay great, whenever you pray say this… And then we have “The Lord’s Prayer.” This prayer is “The prayer of the Lord’s Disciples” and sets Christ’s followers apart from other schools of thought,[4] functions as a means to formation (inwardly and outwardly), and identifies them as Christ’s disciples.[5]

What are the key characteristics that now mark Christ’s disciples?

God is close and personal, like a parent, so we should address our prayer to this loving God elder/parent, who is intimately identified and identifies with us.[6] (Our Father)
We ask for God’s name to be hallowed (sanctified/purified) among us and in the world around us; we desire not to profane God’s name or to have God’s name profaned by others. (Let your name be purified)[7]
- This entails justice and not injustice, equality and not inequality: the hungry fed, the naked clothed, the widowed cared for, the oppressed liberated, the homeless homed…[8]
- Thus we also pray that God’s reign comes in this way…(let your kingdom come)[9]
  - Specifically in (but not limited to[10]) the form of giving us real bread to satisfy real hunger; if we are satisfied, we say “us” so that bread is provided to all who need it (give to us our daily bread)[11]
  - Not given spontaneously generate apart from us but with and through us and our participation[12]
  - In accordance to ways rejecting the violent systems established by the kingdom of humanity[13]
- Help us to spread your love in the world through being reconciled and reconciling, being restored and restoring, being forgiven and forgiving,[14] for we know the activity of divine love is not static but active (forgive us our debts as we forgive those who have debts against us)[15]
And, finally, please assist us not to fall into the traps and temptations in the world that cause us to return to the old age of death dealing narratives and systems (lead us not into temptation).[16]

Then, as we follow Luke’s narrative weaving, Jesus offers two examples intimately connected to what was just discussed. The imagery of the midnight request for bread in the first story links what follows to the request for daily bread in the prayer. However, the idea that it’s strictly about asking and asking and asking for things we want—which was how it was taught to me—is antithetical to what is actually going on in light of Jesus giving the “Lord’s Prayer” to the disciples. In fact, it’s not about “perseverance” as much as it’s about a lack of shame in praying for something for your friend. ἀναίδειαν is about being shameless in your request not how many times you ask—not for yourself but for others[17] (thus the link back to chapter 10: loving God is loving the neighbor). The man asks one friend who has bread to give him bread so he may supply bread to the friend who’s shown up because he doesn’t have bread to give (intercessory request).[18]

So, according to Jesus’s teaching on prayer, to pray is not to pray for only yourself and what you want but what is needed so that basic human needs are met. More specifically, looking at the structure of the Lord’s Prayer—which shapes the follower’s praying and living in the world toward neighbor and God—we rarely pray strictly for me and mine, but for we and us, for things we all need. Thus, if I’m not in need but pray God to supply us our daily bread, I pray in solidarity with those who do need it.

Conclusion

In this prayer and in the stories that follow, the disciples are exhorted to see their umbilical link to their neighbors: they hurt when the neighbor hurts, they are hungry when the neighbor is hungry, they are cold when the neighbor is cold…In this way God’s name is purified and not profaned, God’s reign comes, and divine love continues to sweep through the world capturing the captives unto liberation and life. And not of our own doing. Praying in this way is to bring this solidarity among humans to the One who is in solidarity with them: Jesus the Christ of Nazareth, this human who is God, this neighbor who is God, this one who knows us and our needs, our pain and our sorrow, our hunger and dependence, our vulnerability and death.

So, back to the introduction and the question: why pray? Because I love you. Because I love those whom God loves. Because I want people to know and the world to experience the divine love of God. Today, I pray not because it gets me anything, but that it brings you everything. Lifting each other up in prayer knits us in tight solidarity with each other as we weep with those who weep, hunger with those who hunger, sorrow with those who sorrow, get angry with those who are angry, and even rejoice with those who rejoice. And all of it, by prayer, is done in the presence of God whom we draw close as we shamelessly dare to face God and boldly ask: please, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

[1] Joel B. Green The Gospel of Luke The New International Commentary on the New Testament Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997. 438. “The Lukan account of Jesus’ interaction with Martha and Mary, then, prepares for Jesus’ teaching on the [parenthood] of God by focusing on one’s disposition toward authentic hearing in the presence of the in breaking kingdom.”

[2] Justo L. Gonzalez Luke Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2010. 142-143. “Action shapes attitude, and rite shapes belie: Historians often refer to this with the Latin phrase lex credenda est lex orandi, ‘the rule of worship (or prayer) is the rule of belief.’ … In Our everyday experience we know that the simple action of smiling often leads us to want to smile. In the life of faith, faith leads us to worship; but worship also leads us to faith.”

[3] Gonzalez, Luke, 143. “At the time when Jesus taught this prayer, many other rabbis and teachers proposed certain prayers for their disciples to repeat.”

[4] Green, Luke, 440. “Jesus’ followers pray in this way because this is a distinctive practice of Jesus’ followers. Such practices nurture dispositions appropriate to the community of Jesus’ followers; through its repetition, the message of this prayer would engrave itself into the life of the community.”

[5] Gonzalez, Luke, 143. “So the Lord’s Prayer is also the prayer of the disciples of the Lord the prayer by which these disciples are formed, and which serves as the mark of their identity.”

[6] Green, Luke, 441. “Though often carrying connotations of authority (and, thus, of the response of obedience), in this case ‘father’ actualizes other properties of this metaphor as well-for example, love, nurture, mercy, and delight.” This is why I am opting for another name for this intimacy because Fatherhood and Father have often been abused as authoritative rather than nurturing.

[7] Gonzalez, Luke, 143. In that passage, as in the Lord’s Prayer, the main consideration is the name of the Lord. The Lord’s Prayer begins with, ‘hallowed be your name,’ and the prayer in Proverbs ends with the concern not to ‘profane the name of my God.’ What Proverbs says is that injustice and inequality that lead the poor to steal profane the name of the Lord, and that abundance that leads to self-sufficiency ignores that very name….” And, Green, Luke, 442. “God’s eschatological work to reestablish the holiness of his name, then, invokes shame on the part of his people and invites them to embrace practices that honor him.”

[8] Green, Luke, 440. “Within the practice of such prayer, a premium would be placed on the infusion of a worldview centered on the gracious God, on dependence on God, and on the imitation of God, all understood against an eschatological horizon in which the coming of God in his sovereignty figures prominently.”

[9] Gonzalez, Luke, 143. “Thus the petitions ‘hallowed be your name’ and ‘your kingdom come’ are not independent from the one about daily bread. This is not a list of petitions. It is a single, ardent call for the kingdom in which God’s name is hallowed, and in which all have what they need.”

[10] Green, Luke, 443. “However polysemic Luke’s phrase may thus seem, this does not detract from what is most clear about this petition-namely, its concern with the reliance of Jesus’ followers on God’s provision for the basics of daily life.”

[11] Gonzalez, Luke, 144. “Is this about physical, edible bread, or about spiritual bread? The Question itself reflects a dichotomy that is alien to the biblical text. Eating is a spiritual act, and discipleship is reflected in eating and in sharing food. Furthermore, the very ambiguity of the word translated as ‘daily bread’ points to both the physical and the spiritual… In the Lord’s Prayer, we are asking for exactly that sort of bread—bread of justice and of trust in God.”

[12] Green, Luke, 442. “It is God’s kingdom that will come; only God can overturn the powers at work in the world and establish his universal reign, so the faithful do well to join persons like Simeon and Anna in their hopeful anticipation of the decisive, divine intervention 2:25, 38). At the same time, with the coming of Jesus the kingdom is already being made present, necessitating lives oriented toward serving the divine project and restorative practices that participate in and further the reach of the new order being established by God…”

[13] Green, Luke, 443. “The prayer Jesus teaches his followers embodies the urgency of giving without expectation of return that is, of ripping the fabric of the patronage system by treating others as (fictive) kin rather than as greater or lesser than oneself.”

[14] Green, Luke, 444. “As in previous texts (esp. 6:36), Jesus spins human behavior from the cloth of divine behavior, the embodiment of forgiveness in the practices of Jesus’ followers is a manifestation and imitation of God’s own character.”

[15] Gonzalez, Luke, 144. The implication is that our sins are like unpaid debts-perhaps even unpayable debts-and that while we pray God not to collect on us, we also commit not to collect on others. Connecting this with what has been said above about the kingdom and bread, those who pray for the kingdom and serve it commit not to claim for themselves more than is due, and at the same time, recognizing that they are not always faithful to that promise, to forgive those who take more than is their due.

[16] Gonzalez, Luke, 144. “Finally, the petition about the time of trial” may be an eschatological reference to the final judgment, and also a reference to the temptation not to trust God for daily bread.”

[17] Gonzalez, Luke, 144-145. “One could therefore say that the parable is about intercessory prayer. It is not about my asking God for what I want, but rather about asking God tor what others need. When on that basis we ask, we are given; when on that basis we search, we shall find; when on that basis we knock, the door will be opened. Significantly, at the end of the passage Jesus does not promise his disciples ‘good things,’ as in Matthew (Matt. 7:11), but rather ‘the Holy Spirit.’ What Jesus promises his disciples who ask is that they will be given the Holy Spirit, who in turn will help them ask on behalf of others.”

[18] Gonzalez, Luke, 144. In this story, the theme of bread serves as a link with the Lord’s Prayer. The story is not about ‘perseverance in prayer’ as the NRSV titles it. Actually, the word that the NRSV translates as ‘persistence’ in verse 8 can also be understood as ‘impudence’ or ‘shamelessness.’ So the story is about a man who is sufficiently concerned about the friend who has arrived unexpectedly to dare wake another friend in the middle of the night. It is about one who asks on behalf of another. The one caught with no bread when the friend arrives is also caught between two principles of conduct: hospitality to the unexpected guest on the one hand, and respect for the friend who sleeps on the other. To him, there is no choice-he must call upon the friend who has bread in order to feed the one who has not.

Posted on July 24, 2022July 21, 2022 by laurenlarkin 1

Called, Reoriented, and Resurrected

Sermon on Luke 10:38-42

Psalm 52: 8-9 But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God; I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever. I will give you thanks for what you have done and declare the goodness of your Name in the presence of the godly.

Introduction

I’m intense, and I like to do things well, really well. More to the point, I like to do a lot of things and all of them really well. I take my calls and tasks seriously—my whole person is always invested—“dial-it-in” isn’t in my vocabulary even when I’m burned out, tired, and exhausted. When I was a stay-at-home-mom, I did it with everything I had; when I was an athlete, I spent hours perfecting each move; as a priest, I make sure I’m 100% invested with you; as a student, I hold myself to exacting standards, putting forward my best at every turn, without excuse.

While often this intensity and tendency toward perfectionism is just my neutral mode, every so often the two collide in a horrific accident resulting in the tragedy of oppressive anxiety. I know I’m not alone here. I know you know what I’m talking about. Anxiety sneaks in through an unlocked inner door, illuminating the lack of control. Then, as the lack of control sinks in, fear of failure oozes in through the same door. The burden of both collapses my inner world; my imagination runs wild; my pulse races.

In these moments, I’ve become too associated and tightly bound up with my works and tasks. They’ve started to define me existentially (as a good mom, as a good student, as a good priest, as a good athlete) and eventually ontologically as a human (if I do these things I’m good, my being in the world is good, my essence is good). Anxiety surges; I’m made aware there’s no remedy for it within myself—because it’s my “self” that’s affected. I can’t help myself, because I’m the one who’s anxious. I’m backed into a corner, squeezed in on all sides, and brought to the confession: Help! I’m not in control!

No matter how hard I try, I cannot depend on myself in this moment. I must be called out of myself and called to another; I need to be redirected, reoriented, and realigned. In these moments, I’m lost and must be found; I’m dead, trapped in the tomb of myself, and must be resurrected.

Luke 10:38-42

Now Martha was being troubled greatly by much service; and she stood near and said, “Lord, it concerns you not that my sister left me behind alone to serve? Therefore command her so that she may lend a hand to me.” And [Jesus] answered her and said, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and are being disturbed about many things, but one [thing] is a need; for Mary picked out for herself the good part [and] it will not be taken from her whatsoever.”[1]
(Luke 10:40-42)

Our master-storyteller is at again. Following the good Samaritan story redefining what neighbor love looks like, Luke launches into a (seemingly) disconnected story featuring Jesus, Martha, and Mary. Here, Jesus shows up at Martha’s home and Mary is there, too.[2] Jesus is being intentional here. He enters this certain village and is received into this particular home.

Then, as Jesus enters, two things happen: Martha jumps into service to host the guest she’s welcomed (ὑπεδέξατο, “she received as a guest”) into her home, and Mary gets up, walks over, and sits down at Jesus’s feet (παρακαθεσθεῖσα[3]). This isn’t a case of work v. rest or active v. passive; it’s a case of stone and flesh, death and life. Which part will you choose: that which is dead (turning toward stone) or that which is living (turning toward flesh)? The distinction Luke is making here is orientation: one is oriented and one has to be reoriented.[4]

Martha does exactly what’s expected of her according to the law, tradition, and etiquette; Mary, not so much.[5] Martha grows more and more burdened (περιεσπᾶτο, “she was being greatly troubled”) by the demands of hospitality while her sister just sits there, abandoning her. So, Martha—pushed beyond what she can take—goes to Jesus. Now, both sisters are before Jesus.

Martha wants Jesus to command Mary to come help her with the tasks of table service. She wants him to right the situation, putting it back to normal; she wants him to make it make sense to her.[6] Jesus will help her and make things “right,” but not in the way she expects. When does God work within our systems and according to our plans? When is the word of life forced to serve the things conceived and born of death? When does the Reign of God give way to the kingdom of humanity?

When Jesus speaks, he doesn’t condemn Martha for her anxiety and burdens; he loving calls her (Martha, Martha). The first Martha gets her attention; the second one draws her into himself. Like a mother would her anxious child: the voice of love speaks, and when it does it brings love and not condemnation. Then, Martha’s reoriented from what to whom: God with her—from stone to flesh, from death to life. Jesus doesn’t tell her: stop worrying. He calls her by name. He doesn’t shush or shame her for feeling burdened. He reorients her to him by calling her by name; she is resurrected out of death into life, from dead stone to living flesh. That’s the gospel gospelling itself: love loving.[7]

Where Martha expects Jesus to side with her (which, according to custom, he should), he sides with Mary.[8] As Jesus addressed Martha, he highlighted discipleship isn’t worrisome obedience to “domestic performance,” (to dead traditionalism) but about (re)orientation toward the One who is the revelation and disclosure of God’s love and life. [9] And this love doesn’t incorporate thrusting people back into systems and structures that leave them bound and gagged, laboring unto death (that’s the old age). Jesus is not the Ancient One who deals death, but who speaks and brings the dead into life. Love isn’t in service to the law, but the law in service to love; the tablets of stone serve the fleshy Son of God.

Martha lost herself in the many things demanded of her according to custom, but there is only one need: The Word made flesh. In trying to serve her guest according to the rules and laws of the old age, Martha rendered herself incapable of service to Jesus the Christ. The contrast between Mary and Martha is orientation: Martha has her eyes to the old age; Mary to the new one inaugurated by Christ. Discipleship and its service is to be oriented and reoriented toward the divine activity in the world following closely to the path initiated by Jesus, the path of love. Our faith and works must be oriented to Christ and the Reign of God taking place in Christ; not to our objectives, our systems, our common sense, and our dogmas.[10]

Just as before, so to now: following Christ, participating in the mission of God in the world, partaking and promoting divine love in the world by the power of the Holy Spirit will look very different than our expectations. To love our neighbor is to have mercy; to love God is to reject that which kills and choose that which brings life and light into the world.[11]

Conclusion

The paradox of humanity in this small potent story is this: we’re both Martha and Mary. You can’t pick sides here. We aren’t one or the other (no Maries in a Martha world); we’re both. We run through our days and our rat-races, fretting over the demands of our age—rest is a complete illusion here. Being oriented to the old age, its demands, and trying to appease it is a worthless endeavor because those systems and demands are insatiable. We will never be able to have or do enough to settle all the anxiety and silence the cacophony of demands. When we look to the old age to bring us hope, we are hopeless. So, while we’re called and we heard, we need to be called and to hear…again (it’s why we come here every Sunday).

It’s not about activity being bad and passivity being good, but about our orientation and reorientation in our activity. In Christ, we are called by name out of ourselves, out of death and unto God and life. We receive freedom and liberty for us and for others who are also dying as we were dying. Then we, in the power of the Spirit, go forth and call others by name, too, intersecting their deadly inner narratives with a word of hope and life that is the Word of God (the Gospel).

We cannot isolate Mary’s active love of Christ from the active love for the neighbor of the Samaritan.[12] Work and worship are not separated (no dualism). Luke 10 is an exposition of the entire Law: to love your neighbor is to love God; to love God is to love your neighbor (in this story Jesus is both God and Neighbor).

Beloved, we don’t need to justify ourselves through incessant and frantic activity trying to meet the demands of the old age. [13] We’re justified by faith (alone) in Christ (alone) by God’s grace (alone) and not by any toiling. We’re called by name and look; we’re called by name again and step closer. The one calling, God of very God, ends enslavement to and silences condemnation of the powers of sin and the old age by reorienting us in the life-giving powers of love and the age of Christ. We’re resurrected out death into life.

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted.

[2] Justo L. Gonzalez Luke Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2010. 140. “It is important to note that the home is Martha’s, and that Mary is simply her sister. Although one might surmise that Mary also lives there, it is not the home of May and Martha, but the home of Martha, who has a sister named Mary.

[3] aorist, passive deponent, participle, feminine, nominative, singular. The first principal part is: παρακαθίζω. This verb carries with it an activity that is lost in the English translation “she sat”, might be better to say, “got up and sat down beside” to emphasize that Mary intentionally chose to sit at Jesus’s feet with the purpose to listen to his words. This plays well with the last part in Jesus’s statement to Martha: Mary picked out for herself the good part…

[4] Ernesto Cardenal The Gospel in Solentiname Trans. Donald D. Walsh. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010. 338

[5] Gonzalez, Luke, 140. “Martha does what is expected of her when a guest comes to the house. Mary simply listens to Jesus.”

[6] Joel B. Green The Gospel of Luke The New International Commentary on the New Testament Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997. 436-7, “…Martha’s address to Jesus takes an unexpected, perhaps unconscious turn; while she engages in the irony of self-betrayal, her attempt to win Jesus’ support in a struggle against her sister ends in self-indictment. The nature of hospitality for which Jesus seeks is realized in attending to one’s guest, yet Martha’s speech is centered on ‘me’-talk (3 times). Though she refers to Jesus as ‘Lord,’ she is concerned to engage his assistance in her plans, not to learn from him his.”

[7] Cardenal, Solentiname, 340. “I: ‘We might say, then, that what Jesus is saying here is that the only important thing is love.’”

[8] Gonzalez, Luke, 141. “Here Jesus rebukes Martha for doing what is expected of her, and commends Mary, who is eschewing her traditional woman’s role.”

[9] Green 434, “As high a value as Luke puts on service (by which he often denotes leadership, cf. 22:24-27), service grounded in and brandishing moral intuitions other than those formed through hearing the word is unacceptable. The welcome Jesus seeks is not epitomized in distracted, worrisome domestic performance, but in attending to this guest whose very presence is a disclosure of the divine plan.”

[10] Green 437, “…his status as Lord identifies him as the one whose design transcends self-oriented or conventionally correct plans and whose message takes precedence over the same. Thus, over against the attempt of Martha to assert the priority of her enterprise over that of her sister, Jesus provides his own two-sided valuation of the scene before him. Martha is engaged in anxious, agitated practices, behavior that contrasts sharply with the comportment of a disciple characteristic of Mary. Martha is concerned with many things, Mary with only one. Hence, Martha’s behavior is negatively assessed, Mary’s positively. What is this ‘one thing,’ this ‘better part’ Mary has chosen? Within this narrative co-text, the infinite range of possibilities is narrowed considerably: She is fixed on the guest, Jesus, and his word; she heeds the one whose presence is commensurate with the coming of the kingdom of God. With Jesus presence the world is being reconstituted, with the result that (1) Mary (and. With her, those of low status accustomed to living on the margins of society) need no longer be defined by socially determined roles; and, more importantly in this co-text, (2) Mary and Martha (and, with them, all) must understand and act on the priority of attending to the guest before them, extending to Jesus and his messengers the sort of welcome in which the authentic hearing of discipleship is integral.”

[11] Gonzalez, Luke, 141. “In the coming of Jesus, something radically new has happened, and this radically new thing demands an equally radical obedience (see, for instance, 9:57-62). The parable of the Good Samaritan calls for a radical obedience that breaks cultural, ethnic, and theological barriers. The story of Mary and Martha is equally radical. First of all, we often do not realize that the first one to break the rules is Jesus himself. He is the guest, and against all rules of hospitality he rebukes Martha, who is his host. And Mary too breaks the rules. Her role as (most probably) a younger sister, or as one living in the house of her sister, is to help her in her various chores. Instead, she just sits at the feet of Jesus and listens to him.”

[12] W. Travis McMaken Our God Loves Justice Minneapolis, MN: 2017. “Theological commitment to the true socialism of the kingdom of God and engagement with socialist analysis of capitalist social structures, which are antithetical to that kingdom, coalesce in Gollwitzer’s thought to make the fundamental point that Christians must take sides on political issues, and they must take the side of the oppressed. Many of those Americans today who think of themselves as Christians feel very uncomfortable when faced with this demand. As Gollwitzer correctly notes, however, taking sides ‘sounds terrifying only to him who is blind to the fact that the empirical church has actually always taken sides.’ Christians have, by and large, sided with the status quo, But the gospel’s call to repentant conversion—to metanoia—‘reaches into the politico-social dimension,’ and ‘as long as we shrink from revolutionizing [that dimension], we have not really heard’ the gospel’s call. That is, we have not encountered the God who loves justice, and who is consequently served through the pursuit of political love.” 146

[13] Helmut Gollwitzer “Fellow-Workers With Love” The Way to Life Trans David Cairns. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1980. “When we no longer defend and justify ourselves, then God, who is greater than our heart, defends us, and holds us fast…and we can breath again; we are not rejected as we deserve to be, we are still accepted by the love of God.”132.

Posted on July 17, 2022July 14, 2022 by laurenlarkin 0

One Who Caused Mercy

Sermon on Luke 10:25-37

Psalm 25:7-9 Gracious and upright is God; therefore God teaches sinners in God’s way. God guides the humble in doing right and teaches God’s way to the lowly. All the paths of God are love and faithfulness to those who keep God’s covenant and testimonies.

Introduction

Mercy seems lacking at many twists and turns of life. Mercy nearly feels out of place as a characteristic. It’s got that distant vibe of something that once was but isn’t anymore; it’s gone archaic, become a relic of ages past, no longer a functional aspect of our modern human society, something we’ve evolved out of. Mercy feels out of reach, like grasping oil with the hand; like something slippery, of divine substance locked in noncorporeal estates of spiritual realms.

When was the last time you experienced mercy? When was the last time you acted merciful?

The tragic thing about our distance from mercy is that it’s an exceptionally human characteristic and action. It doesn’t exist in our world if it’s not performed. Mercy, simply, is not getting what one deserves to get, most often in terms of punishment and consequences. Mercy is an action, a definite and precise action of refusing to condemn another’s actions. It’s the opposite of revenge. Mercy is born from compassion; when extended, mercy turns into forgiveness. All of this of the human realm.

Mercy doesn’t exist in nature. Nature is beautiful and majestic, it’s worthy of honor and respect, care and love. But merciful? Nope. Nature’s laws work themselves out as they will, irrespective of persons. For mercy to exist and be experienced, it must be brought into the world from one person to another; no one stumbles into a pool of mercy. We receive it; from my hand to yours or your hand to mine. Even in the presence of the law, mercy exists, because law serves love and love serves the neighbor and therein is mercy.

It’s an essential element of the fabric of thriving human community. Without mercy, the other will grow more and more into a threat. In an environment and atmosphere where everyone one must fight for their own, claw their way to survive, and be wary of all dangers, mercy cannot exist. It will be suffocated and strangled; for lack of air and light, it will cease to grow. Sadly, that community will cease to be justifiably described as human. Where mercy is lacking, love is lacking, and where there is no love there cannot be human life.

Luke 10:25-37

Now, wanting to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” … [Jesus asked the lawyer] “Which of these three it seems to you has become a neighbor of the one who fell in with the robbers?” And [the lawyer] said, “The one who caused mercy with him.” And Jesus said to him, “You go and you, you do likewise.” [1]
(Luke 10:29, 36-37)

Our gospel passage is quite familiar to us. One so familiar it warrants pause and reflection. I think we might be missing something crucial in the parable if we don’t slow down. Believe it or not, it’s these parables of Jesus that simultaneously define and substantiate the life and presence of the church; and continue to do so if we listen today.

So, Luke, the master story-teller, sets the scene: Jesus is approached by a lawyer-priest[2] who wishes to test Jesus. What must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus responds, In the law, what is written? How do you read it? I imagine Jesus smiled, loving him, knowing full well the intention of the lawyer-priest. All teachers of God’s word should be tested. I think we read into this moment our obsession with hierarchy and silent compliant obedience. There’s actually nothing wrong with this exchange; there’s nothing wrong with Jesus being tested. The only risk here is that the one testing may find themselves failing their own test.[3]

The lawyer-priest’s answer to Jesus summarized the law: love God with your entire self and your neighbor as yourself. So far so good. You answered rightly; do this and you will live, says Jesus. But then, the lawyer-priests shifts gears[4]—wishing to justify himself—and asks Jesus, annnnnnd who is my neighbor? Again, I imagine Jesus loved him and smiled in a way that spoke to an oncoming encounter with God.

Jesus proceeds to lead the lawyer-priest to the answer by telling a story about an unknown[5] man who fell in among robbers, was beaten, stripped of his clothing, and left for dead (ἀφέντες ἡμιθανῆ). Then, a priest walks by and seeing the man left half-dead on the road passes by on the other side (ἀντιπαρῆλθεν) of the road. Later, a Levite does the same thing. Then a Samaritan comes along, sees the man, and felt compassion (ἐσπλαγχνίσθη) and went toward (προσελθὼν) him with the intent to minister to his wounds and generously care for him. Jesus stops and asks the lawyer-priest, Which of these three it seems to you has become a neighbor of the one who fell in among the robbers? And everything changes.

The lawyer-priest is cornered and must answer: the one who caused mercy with him. In a beautiful and stunning way, the lawyer-priest is forced to confess that his conception of what defines a neighbor is painfully narrow: neighbor isn’t geographically defined, isn’t defined by agreement of interpretation of God,[6] but by love and mercy.[7] It’s compassion that makes the Samaritan stand out; had he just passed by his Samaritanness would’ve meant nothing.[8]

Again, I’m compelled to point out that it’s not that the lawyer-priest is confessing that the Samaritan correctly identified that the half-dead man was his neighbor (this is how we normally interpret this parable). It is not that we recognize others as neighbors, but that we act neighborly.[9] Thus, Jesus’s injunction at the end to go and do likewise isn’t a throw-away mandate, but rather this: the one who acts as a neighbor loves the neighbor by showing mercy and thus loves God. This is the point of the law, in other words.

This is the point of the parable: one cannot love God and cross by on the other side of the road while someone lies half dead in the gutter.[10] You might be able to recite the law and believe it, but if you can cross by and ignore someone who is suffering, well then…it begs the question. Love of God and love of neighbor knows no boundaries[11] when it’s you charged with the love of God to act neighborly.[12] Mercy creates neighbors and is the evidence of love for God.[13]

Conclusion

Whether or not this lawyer-priest rejected this premise or agreed to it is uncertain; but one thing is: he couldn’t leave that moment unchanged.[14] Neither are we left the same. The lure of the parable is to reconsider yourself: are you merciful? And, the harder question: do you love God? You can come here and worship all day long; you can sequester yourself in retreat upon retreat, covered deep in silence and prayer, but if you do nothing out of mercy, out of love, then you do not love God. You can know all the dogma and doctrine well, but if you have not love, you are just a clanging gong, says Paul. You can wear all the fancy robes, light every candle, and say the eucharist, but if you have not mercy for others who are suffering, you serve yourself and not God.

If you never step foot in a church, and you express mercy and compassion with those who suffer, you love God. [15] You can deny God’s very existence and yet that you love and have mercy on your neighbor makes you that much closer to God than those who claim to love God but hate their neighbor.[16] Why dare I say this? Because God is love. To love and have mercy for and with others is evidence of God and God’s spirit living in the world, even more so than any stone building or wood table.

God is the force and thrust of love and mercy in a world that is bent in on itself, a world dying for its own insatiable desire to feed its ego, a world killing itself because it believed the lie that it has no purpose. God is the force and thrust of love and mercy in cacophonous noise of humans clamoring for more isolation and exclusion, more me and mine, more death and destruction. That love and mercy might still yet exist means God is alive.

Please remember this, beloved, God is not dead; we are. But, also, hear this: our hope rests in the mercy and compassion of the One who raises the dead into new life. This hope, this claim is our religion,[17] our story, our myth; dare we believe it? Dare we follow this God, this Jesus the Christ of Nazareth who brings mercy and compassion so close to us, we’re not only bathed in it but it recreated by it? Dare we live like this God is real? I hope so; too many people are dying in the streets as we walk by on the other side.

God have mercy. May we have mercy, too.

[1] Translation mine unless otherwise noted.

[2] Joel B. Green The Gospel of Luke The New International Commentary on the New Testament Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997. 427. “When it is recalled that priests functioned as experts on the law when not performing their priestly duties at the temple, this adds to the drama of the unfolding encounter – not least since the ensuing parable will have as one of its primary characters a priest returning from duty at the temple (v 31). That is, within the socio-historical context imagined by the narrative, the identification of this lawyer and the temple staff of the parable may be more immediate than normally thought.”

[3] Ernesto Cardenal The Gospel in Solentiname Trans. Donald D. Walsh. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2010. 332. “LAUREANO: ‘In trying to catch Jesus in a trap, he was the one who fell into the trap. Jesus makes him say things he doesn’t do.’”

[4] Justo L. Gonzalez Luke Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2010. 138. “He uses theological debate as a means to avoid obedience. Just as it is possible for a church body to postpone decision by referring matters to committees, so is it possible for a church and for individuals to postpone obedience by seeking further clarification. Quite often, what the Lord requires is clear; but the cost is also clear, and so we ask more and more questions.”

[5] Green, Luke, 429. “The choice of opening, ‘a certain man,’ constitutes a powerful rhetorical move on Jesus’ part. In light of the debate surrounding the reach of love, grounded in how one reads Leviticus 19, the impossibility of classifying this person as either friend or foe immediately subverts any interest in questions of this nature. Stripped of his clothes and left half-dead, the man’s anonymity throughout the story is insured; he is simply a human being, a neighbor, in need.”

[6] Gonzalez, Luke, 139. “The first is that the exclusion of the Samaritan is not only racial or ethnic. It is also religious. From the point of view of the Jewish doctor of the law, the Samaritan was a heretic, one who did not serve God properly. …Now it is the Samaritan heretic who is the obedient servant of God. Thus the parable has much to say about recognizing the action of God in those whose theology we may find faulty-in itself a very valuable lesson in these times of theological ad political polarization.”

[7] Cardenal, Solentiname, 332, 333. “OLIVIA: ‘Your neighbors are all of humanity, that’s what that fellow didn’t know, that his neighbors were everybody.’” And “OLIVIA: “He gave him as an example a person of another race and another religion so we can know that everybody is a neighbor. He gave as an example one who wasn’t a neighbor but just the opposite, an enemy.’”

[8] Green, Luke, 431. “As a result, what distinguishes this traveler from the other two is not fundamentally that they are Jews and he is a Samaritan, nor is it that they had high status as religious functionaries and he does not. What individualizes him is his compassion, leading to action, in the face of their inaction. Having established this point of distinction, his status in comparison with theirs becomes shockingly relevant, for it throws into sharp relief the virtue of his response. For the same reason, his actions condemn their failure to act. Unlike them, he has compassion. and this is the turning point not only of his encounter with the wounded man but, indeed, of this entire narrative unit (vv 25-37). The Samaritan, then, participates in the compassion and covenantal faithfulness of God, who sees and responds with salvific care. The parable of the compassionate Samaritan thus undermines the determination of status in the community of God’s people on the basis of ascription, substituting in its place its place a concern with performance, the granting of status on the basis of one’s actions.”

[9] Gonzalez, Luke, 139-140. “The second is that Jesus’ question at the end is not, as one might expect, who realized that the man by the roadside was a neighbor, but rather which of the three who went by was a neighbor to the man by the roadside. If that is the question, Jesus’ final injunction to the lawyer, ‘Go and do likewise,’ does not simply mean, go and act in love to your neighbor, but rather, go and become a neighbor to those in need, no matter how alien they may be. It : is not just a matter of loving and serving those who are near us (which is what ‘neighbor’ means) but also of drawing near to those who for whatever reason— racial, ethnic, theological, political-may seem to be alien to us.”

[10] Green Luke 425-426. “That the practice of God’s word is the unit is obvious from the repetition and placement of the verb ‘to do.’ The lawyer inquires, ‘What must I do?’; following their exchange, Jesus responds, ‘Do this’ (v 25, 28). In this way the first segment of this unit…is bound together with references to praxis. The question of the identity of one’s neighbor leads into a further exploration of appropriate behavior, however, with the conclusion drawn by the lawyer himself. The one who was a neighbor, he acknowledges, is ‘the one who did mercy’. Jesus responds, ‘Do likewise” (v 37). Jesus’ closing words, then, do not summarize the parable of the compassionate Samaritan (as though the purpose of the parable were to present a moral obligation to act in such-and-such a way). Rather, they return to the original question of the lawyer ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’ The parable thus serves a hermeneutical function. It interprets the summation of the law provided by the legal expert.”

[11] Green, Luke, 426. “By the end of the story, Jesus has transformed the focus of the original question; in fact, Jesus’ apparent attempt to answer the lawyer’s question turns out to be a negation of that question’s premise. Neighbor love knows no boundaries.”

[12] Cardenal, Solentiname, 333. “FELIPE: “It seems that instead it’s the one who serves that’s the neighbor.’”

[13] Cardenal, Solentiname, 335. “ELVIS: ‘The fact is that in your neighbor there’s God. It’s not that love of God gets left out, it’s that those who love their neighbor are right there loving God.’”

[14] Green, Luke, 427. “In his Galilean ministry, Jesus had worked to exterminate those boundaries that predetermine human interaction; what was begun there will continue to characterize his message on the way to Jerusalem. His portrayal of a Samaritan as one who embodies the law, and whose comportment models the covenant faithfulness of God—and whose doing stands in sharp contradistinction to the practices of temple personnel on the road—serves this wider motif as it obliterates the construction of human existence sanctioned by the religious establishment in Jerusalem. Although Luke does not document the response of the lawyer, he nevertheless shows the degree to which his encounter with Jesus, if taken seriously, would destabilize the world of this lawyer and challenge him to embrace the new world propagated through Jesus’ ministry.”

[15] Cardenal, Solentiname, 334. “LAUREANO: ‘The people are the wounded man who’s bleeding to death on the highway. The religious people who are not impressed by the people’s problems are those two that were going to the temple to pray. The atheists who are revolutionaries are the good Samaritan of the parable, the good companion, the good comrade.’”

[16] Cardenal, Solentiname, 335-336. “That’s why Jesus somewhere else says that the second commandment is ‘like the first,’ and in this parable he shows that the two are fulfilled by fulfilling the second. And that’s why too, when the rich young man asks him what he should do to be saved, Jesus quotes to him the commandments about neighborly love, without mentioning the one about love of God.”

[17] Sölle, Bread Alone, 50. “Critics of religion (who at the same time must of necessity be critics of poesy, which portrays man’s search for the absolute) take their stand on their belief in progress. They believe that science will put an end to man’s countless and inexhaustible wishes because on the one hand it fulfills these wishes in a limited way, and on the other hand it also exposes them as illusions. The big question, however, is if it isn’t just the very fulfillment of some wishes and hopes that makes man’s thirst for a final fulfillment even greater. Indeed, research in the field of primitive religions and millennial movements teaches us that magical and real expectations continually evolve into wishes for emancipation from colonial rule and for a new identity, thirst for riches and justice, so that religious behavior cannot possibly be divided into spiritual and worldly components. A purely spiritual part is just as unthinkable as a purely materialistic part. Ultimately, the questions of religion which develop into complex religious systems in the so-called higher religions become increasingly more comprehensive, and the claim they make becomes increasingly absolute and incapable of earthly fulfillment.”

Posted on July 10, 2022July 7, 2022 by laurenlarkin 0

Our Stories This Story: A Revolutionary Story

I recommend reading/listening to the sermon from Ash Wednesday, which functions as an introduction to this Lenten series. You can access it here. For the previous sermons in this series, (“The Youth”) click here,(“The Parents”) click here, and (“The Worker”) click here, (“The Old”) click here, (“The Others”) click here, and “Us” click here.

Sermon on Luke 24:1-12

Psalm 118:15-17 There is a sound of exultation and victory in the tents of the righteous: “The right hand of [God] has triumphed! the right hand of [God] is exalted! the right hand of [God] has triumphed!” I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of [God].

Introduction

Death dared to stand between God and the Beloved and did not survive; like a mama bear eager to protect her cubs, God roared and death became dust; God’s beloved was liberated. Happy Easter! Hallelujah!

Today, we are people of story.

Today, on this beautiful day of celebration, of praise, of great and big Hallelujahs! we become a people of story. We become a people created and crafted by a radical and profound story of God’s abundant, steadfast, unconditional, never-giving-up, mama-bear-like love for the cosmos.

Today our posture uncoils, and we boldly turn our faces toward the outer edges of the universe letting the rays of the risen Son shine down upon us. All that was has come undone; everything is now as it should be according to God’s story of love for the world and all people.

Today, we get to stand (literally and metaphorically) in the realm of life in the aftermath of the exposure that we do not know what we are doing. Today, we get to float in the wonderful amniotic fluid of divine love soothing over every wound and trauma, we get to dance freely to the manifold melodies of liberation, we get to drink in the waters of life, consume the food of the word of God of love, and hear the comforting declaration that even when we did not and do not know what we are doing, God does know what God’s doing.

Even when we were determined to terminate God’s story, God met our determination with God’s story of love and forgiveness, mercy and grace; what we sentenced to death and thrust into the dirt, God made alive and caused the very ground under our feet to burst open. In the resurrection of the Christ, we receive the splendor of God’s story and watch it eclipse our own feeble stories hallmarked with pain and sorrow, captivity and complicity, sickness and trauma, and death. Today our stories become living, breathing testaments to the revolutionary love of God.

Today we are a people of story.

Luke 24:1-12

Now, on the first [day] of the week at the deep of the early dawn, [the women] came to the tomb carrying spices that they prepared. And they found the stone having been rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus; they became perplexed about this. And then, Lo!, two men in lustrous clothing stood by the women; [the women] became full of fear. While bowing [their] faces to the earth, [the two men] said to the women, “Why are you seeking the living among the dead? He is not here, but he has been raised. Remember how he said to you while in Galilee saying ‘it is necessary the Son of Humanity is handed over into the hands of sinful humanity and crucified and on the third day raised up.’” And the women remembered his words…
Luke 24:1-8, translation mine unless otherwise noted

“And the women remembered his words…” This is the profound moment when these brave women[1] who were previously lurking in the background of Luke’s story surge to the foreground.[2] In addition to that, this is the moment when they begin to grasp the depth of what they’ve encountered: God…the awe inspiring and undiluted power of God’s fulfilled promise to liberate the captives even.

Luke tells us: coming to the tomb early in the morning, bearing their spices, they were prepared to meet Jesus’s dead body. Make no mistake, these women are no heroes of “blind faith”, as if they obstinately held to some whimsical fantastic fiction denying what had happened, refusing to accept reality. They knew what happened; they were grounded. They were (literally) carrying spices for burial. They expected to fight against larger-than-life stone to access the decaying body of Jesus of Nazareth and anoint it.[3]

They expected to encounter death; they were ready for that. Instead, they encountered life, and were thrown back on their heels.

Two men greet them in lustrous and dazzling clothes and tell the women: why are you looking for the living among the dead? Let’s imagine the two men ask the question and then smile, knowing (full well) what these women were expecting and knowing (full well) they are seconds away from dropping all those prepared burial spices on the ground. Try to listen to the lilt in the question as it falls on the astounded women who are becoming more perplexed… the living…? …among the dead?

The familiar aroma of the paradox of comfort and chaos lingers in that hewn out hole in the rock. For these women, the world is turned upside down…Jesus is alive and not among the dead…The story just took a radical turn. In a moment, these humble women are wrapped up (and lead! [4]) in what will become one of the revolutionary stories of divine love for the world. A story so radical many people and churches will and do suffer persecution and death to tell it.

For these women, nothing will ever be the same. As they leave the empty tomb and return home proclaiming this divine revolution against death in Jesus being raised from the dead, their own stories change for good. What follows, what comes after this encounter with God is not a continuation of what went before…everything is being made new! A new order is ushered in.[5] This isn’t some happy ending where everyone lives happily ever after; this is a brand-new story, a new chapter in history, in the history of these women, in the history of the world.[6] God’s battle with death is won in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit; everyone who collides with this story, will be forever changed in one way or another.[7]

Conclusion

Today,

We are a people who passes on story rather than mess
We are a people who passes on story rather than isolation and alienation
We are a people who passes on story rather than toil
We are a people who passes on story rather than utility
We are a people who passes on story rather than exclusion
We are a people who passes on life rather than death

Today, we become a people who passes on story rather than not-story. As those who encounter God today, in this story, we are changed for good. What was before is eclipsed by this moment. The stories we bring here today—the ones we were given by others who couldn’t love us as well as they wanted to; the ones we were given by those who hated us; the ones we were given through pain, sorrow, suffering, illness, grief, trauma, bullying, and death; the ones we give ourselves—all of our stories, one by one, are rendered to dust as we are enveloped and wrapped up in this new story of God’s for us: Beloved. In this “Beloved” we are called, we stand up, we rise, we are resurrected, and we enter into the divine revolution of God’s love loosed against the remnants of death and its destructive systems.

What was, ended; all that lies ahead is the divine material that is the foundation of our new life and new creation, our liberation and belovedness, our faith, hope,[8] and persistence.[9] This new life—this rising up and resurrection[10]—becomes our praxis in the world. As resurrected new creations, our posture in the world and toward others is completely altered. In this new life we participate with the Holy Spirit in the liberation of the captives.[11] As those summoned from death, from slumber, from the myths and lies we’ve been telling ourselves, we become those who wake up and see, hear, feel, and speak the profound good news of liberation for the world[12] from the captivity of death. In doing so, we demonstrate to the world that resurrection is for now and not strictly for the future.[13] As we bring good news to the oppressed, disenfranchised, poor, lonely, isolated, excluded, used up, and the burnt out, we bring resurrection into the present and push back the expired tyranny of death and usher in the reign of love and life. [14]

I want to close by way of a poem I stumbled across in my studies this week. The title of the poem is Threatened with Resurrection, by Julia Esquivel a poet and Guatemalan exile. I’m quoting the final few stanzas:

No, brother,
it is not the noise in the streets
which does not let us sleep.

Join us in this vigil
and you will know what it is to dream!
Then you will know how marvelous it is
to live threatened with Resurrection!

To dream awake,
to keep watch asleep,
to live while dying,
and to know ourselves already
resurrected![15]
Julia Esquivel, “Threatened with Resurrection”

By living into this story we’ve been given today, we live into resurrection now, living lives joining in the “vigil” of those who suffer under what was and those who are threatened with the violence of not-yet, we live “already resurrected,” we live “while dying,” we “dream awake”, and keep watch even while sleeping. When we dare to let the resurrection of the Christ be the divine revolution in the world that it is, we dare to live resurrected now, we dare to become those who don the love of God and spread it to everyone, and we dare to be those who pass on liberation, pass on love, pass on life…those who dare to pass on the story.

[1] Ernesto Cardenal The Gospel in Solentiname “The Resurrection (Matthew 28L1-10) “Thomas Pena: ‘The got up early because they wanted to. And they were brace, because they weren’t scared of the National Guardsmen that were on duty there.’” P. 618

[2] Justo L. Gonzalez Luke Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2010. 272. “…Luke will tell parallel but different stories about the women disciples and the men. In this particular case, however, the story about the women comes first. These women have been present, but have remained mostly in the background of the story, ever since Luke introduced them in 8:2-3…Now they come to the foreground as the first witnesses to the resurrection.

[3] Gonzalez Luke 273. “They, no less than the rest, believe that in the cross all has come to an end. It is time to return home to their more traditional lives. But before they do that, they must perform one last act of love for their dead Master: they must anoint his body.”

[4] Gonzalez Luke 273. “Even though the later course of church history, with its expectation of entirely male leadership, would lead us to think otherwise, it is they who bring the message of the resurrection to the eleven, and not vice versa.” See also, Cardenal Solentiname “[Cardenal]: ‘In those times nobody paid much attention to women. And that’s why those women maybe didn’t run any risk, as Laureano says. Their role was only to go and weep and then embalm the body of Jesus. A humble role. But this Gospel assigns them a more important role: they were witnesses to the resurrection.” P. 618

[5] Gonzalez Luke 273

[6] Gonzalez Luke 274. “The resurrection brings about a new reality, a new order. Things do not continue as before … The resurrection is not the continuation of the story. Nor is it just its happy ending. It is the beginning of a new story, of a new age in history…The victory is won. What now remain are no more than skirmishes in a battle that has already been won.”

[7] Gonzalez Luke 275. “Thus, in the areas that were part of Christendom as well as in the rest of the world, Christians have been rediscovering the significance of the resurrection as victory over the powers of the old age, and as the beginning of a new order and a new history pointing to the final establishment of the reign of God.”

[8] Gollwitzer Way to Life 141 “Nothing is lost, nothing is in vain. Tribulation is not the last thing, joy, arrival at the goal will be the last thing, and for this reason we shall be able to hold on in faith and in hope, hearing the primes ever anew.”

[9] Helmut Gollwitzer The Way to Life: Sermons in a Time of World Crisis Trans. David Cairns Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1981 (eng) p. 139 [German version: Wendung zum Leben München: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1980. “The whole Gospel calls to us ‘look forward!’ however things are going with you. Look forward! Hope will come to you form that direction, and staying power. Look forward, you see there what gives you the power to hold on!”

[10] Dorothee Sölle “Uprising and Resurrection” The Strength of the Weak: Toward a Christian Feminist Identity Trans. Robert and Rita Kimber Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1984. Pp. 71 “Rising, uprising, and resurrection belong together factually as well as linguistically. Rising is a word that describes what an individual does in the morning, uprising, what a people does when it shakes off political sleep. Both of them mean learning how to walk upright, in a way that is still perhaps unfamiliar. To rise up means not to cringe anymore, to lose fear.”

[11] Helmut Gollwiter The Rich Christians & Poor Lazarus Trans. David Cairns Edinburgh: St. Andrews Press, 1970 (eng) p.3 [German version: Die reichen Christen und der arme Lazarus München: Chr. Kaiser Verlad, 1968.] “Only by altered attitudes in this world, not by assertions about divine truths, which are claimed to be true ‘in themselves,’ can we bear witness to the relevance of our confession of faith. Therefore John A. T. Robinson is right to ask his question ‘Do we affirm the Easter faith in these days, when we insist that God raised Jesus from the dead—or when we dare to gamble our lives in the faith that God will raise us from the dead? Can we do the former, without doing the latter.’ And indeed, keeping our eye on the liberal reduction of faith to humanism, we shall also have to add, “Can we do the latter, without doing the former?”

[12] Sölle Strength 71-72 “We rise from sleep; we are resurrected from death. An uprising is a rising from political sleep, from a kind of death in which people are deprived of crucial elements of their lives and are commandeered by others.”

[13] Sölle Strength 76 “The price we have to pay for a truly human life has not become less since ancient times, much as we may want to believe that it has. People are still being tortured today because they have fought for justice. People are still dying today from the indifference of others who do not want rebellion and do not need resurrection. But despite the betrayal of the revolution and, God knows, the betrayal of Christ, we see happening again and again what we all need most uprisings of life against the many forms of death; which is to say, resurrection.”

[14] Cardenal Solentiname 619 “I: ‘And he goes on showing us that he’s alive, us, gathered here twenty centuries later; and he’s present in the midst of us.’ WILLAM: ‘-The important thing is that he’s alive wherever there’s community.’”

[15] Julia Esquivel Threatened with Resurrection for more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Esquivel. I’ve ordered her book of the same title; more to come!

Posted on April 17, 2022April 16, 2022 by laurenlarkin 0

Our Stories This Story: The Parents

I recommend reading/listening to the sermon from Ash Wednesday, which functions as an introduction to this Lenten series. You can access it here. For the previous sermon in this series, click here.

Sermon on Luke 13:31-35

Psalm 27:5-7 One thing have I asked of [God]; one thing I seek; that I may dwell in the house of [God] all the days of my life; To behold the fair beauty of [God] and to seek [God] in [God’s] temple. For in the day of trouble [God] shall keep me safe in [God’s] shelter; [God] shall hide me in the secrecy of [God’s] dwelling and set me high upon a rock. (73)

Introduction

“I like to think I know what I’m doing. I mean at least the kids…. Yes, honey, your shoes are over there by the front door…the kids need me to look like I know what I’m doing. Especially now. There are so many reasons…Hey! Put the cat down…she’s not a ball! There’s so much to consider and contemplate, and if I dare to really let it sink in *sips wine* about how bad our world is right now I may just never come … Well, if you take the 2 and then add it to the 6, what’s the answer then? …These kids, they’re young and need a future, a world, free from visible and invisible enemies and…Oh no, you did fall down! Here, let me get some ice…Sometimes I fear that I’ll crack under all this pressure *sips wine… I don’t feel that old but I’m bone deep exhausted; nearly burnt out.”[1]
From the Ash Wednesday 2022 Sermon

We’ve become a people who passes on isolation and alienation rather than story.

Our culture tells us we cannot be weak. It sings to us of the virtue of being strong and capable, rising to the top by virtue of our own inner drive and determination. We are “self-made”; we “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps”; we forge our own paths and strike out on our own; and we certainly don’t want any help we didn’t previously earn by our industrious autonomy.

While I wish I could say with confidence the church is a place where anyone can come to find solidarity in weakness, it’s not. Often, it’s the church’s malignant understanding of faith as a vibranium shield of protection perpetuating the lie: I’m too blessed to be stressed! Ironically, it’s among Christians—following Jesus who not only submitted to human weakness manifest in death and who elevated the weak and downtrodden to the status of blessed—where the weak are ostracized and shamed.

We’ve become trapped in the myth of self-sufficiency and strength leading to isolation and alienation. We no longer value communal and mutual thriving and survival. It’s now: one for one. Neighbors are strangers—especially if everyone is a threat. Kids move away from parents; grandparents live in different states; and everyone is forced into their own bubble isolated and alienated. In this scheme, marriages buckle under the pressure to be all in all; partners bear the burden of being the one and only and forever for the other.

Parents, caregivers, and guardians—anyone connected to the life of a child—carry the stress of balancing the demands and the mythology of autonomy and self-sufficiency. And as stress increases, as fears grow because of global pandemic, ecological crises, social tumult, and war, tensions rise driving thick, thick wedges between us, forcing us more and more unable to ask for help, confess need, and express weakness; afraid that if we do, it’ll fall apart, crumble to the ground, and trapping those under our care and charge under the rubble. We put on brave faces, smile when we don’t want to, tell them everything is fine and teach them that weakness is bad, fear isn’t real, and opening up isn’t what adults do. And the myth goes on; so, too, does isolation and alienation.

Luke 13:31-35

At that same hour, some Pharisees approached [Jesus] saying to him, “Get out! and travel from here!; Herod desires to put you to death!” And he said to them, “You travel to that fox and tell him this: behold, I cast out demons and accomplish healings today and tomorrow and I am finished on the third [day] … “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and the one who stones the ones who have been sent to them, how often I desired to gather your children together in the same manner a hen [gathers together] her brood of young birds under [her] wings, and you did not desire it.” (Lk 13:31-32, 34)[2]
Luke 13:31-32, 34

In this rather cryptic[3] message from Jesus, he associates his presence with the work of God by correlating it to the great line of prophets and “the ones sent to them” who were once present with God’s people, too. So, it’s no surprise that he suffers the same plight as those before him (trying to be killed and stoned).[4] Those who are sent by God to proclaim God’s message of liberation to the captives (God’s judgment on the kingdoms of humanity) are met with hostility and disdain by those who rule over the people with authority and power intimately tied to subjection and oppression.[5] One doesn’t casually walk in and start dismantling human-made power structures, awaken people from myths of false strength, isolation, and alienation, and exhort them into their own story with God and think they’ll leave town unscathed. Herod has every reason to hate Jesus and seek his life.[6]

Jesus then calls out, in tones that I can only imagine mirror his very loving verbal embrace of Martha uttered previously in chapter 10: Jerusalem, Jerusalem…. The double use of the name indicates a deep sense of love. I know this tone; I’ve used this tone. The tone of deep love for this person who is straying or making choices in opposition to life and thriving; the same tone of yearning and hope and summoning and beckoning back. The tone used to get your child’s attention in the most kind and loving and compassionate way. Not the short and curt hollered version; the slow, lyrical, warm song-like version. The one that makes the tumult and chaos settle as this one just called turns and looks at the one calling their name. This is God grabbing the wayward chin of Jerusalem and gently pulling their gaze to God’s longing and eager and loving face. This is God in maternal love with God’s beloved.

And like a mother, Jesus is eager to gather up and protect the beloved from the threat of reckless and senseless destruction.[7] And if you know chickens—as Christie explained to me on Wednesday—then you know that a broody hen will aggress anything threatening to harm order to protect her brood of young birds. As Jesus compares himself to this broody hen, he shows his concern for their spiritual well-being and their physical well-being; he will deal with those who peddle a mythology of lordship over God’s people rendering them oppressed and enslaved to human-lordship and in themselves. God will contend with those who exploit and abuse God’s people, trapping them in lies of isolation and alienation.[8]

Conclusion

The sad part is that Jerusalem, according to Jesus, doesn’t want protection or deliverance.[9] They’re deep in their myth, they don’t need the help, they’ve got this taken care of, everything is fine. They are forehead deep in their own story, handed to them by those who are exploiting and oppressing them; they’ve forgotten another story[10]…the one God gave them declaring them to be God’s people loved by God, empowered by God’s glory and spirit, created for life and not death, for mutuality and not isolation and alienation.

I sit back and I watch it,
hands in my pockets
Waves come crashing over me
but I just watch ‘em
I just watch ‘em
I’m under water but I feel like I’m on top of it
I’m at the bottom and I don’t know what the problem is
I’m in a box
But I’m the one who locked me in
Suffocating and I’m running out of oxygen[11]
NF “Paralyzed”

The longer we believe the lie that we are fine on our own, the longer we will be stuck in a box we’ve locked ourselves in. The longer we tell ourselves this lie of “strongest is best,” the longer alienation and isolation will continue to be passed on like genetic traits from parent to child. Our children are really amazing humans; that we treat them as less is astounding. When we don’t speak up, put words to our fears and concerns with them, we tell them they aren’t trustworthy, and that they must be like this, too—dismiss their feelings and concerns. Your kids, the children in our community, the young ones in our society understand way more than we give them credit. When we put on our façade of strength, it’s no wonder they grow distrustful and wary of adults…we’re lying to them, and they know it.

When we have the audacity to buck the trend of alienation and isolation by intentionally including our young ones into our hearts and minds, we give them the freedom to confess their own fears, to validate what they are feeling, and, as a consequence they acquire their own liberation from fear. By bringing them into our narrative we not only eliminate our alienation and isolation but also theirs. In doing this, we teach them a better way, a better narrative of solidarity and love.[12] We step out of our box, clinging to the divine story of love and solidarity, and—breathing in deep—confess: I might be scared, but I’m the beloved child of God and not alone; I’m concerned, but anything is possible with God; I’m helpless to solve this, but God is with us in this suffering and I’m present with you in yours.

Beloved, we are not alone; we are with God thus with each other and with each other thus with God.

[1] Taken from the Ash Wednesday 2022 Sermon

[2] Translation mine unless otherwise noted

[3] Justo L. Gonzalez Luke Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2010. 178. “The message is rather cryptic, for he will take much more than three days on his way to Jerusalem- For this reason. Some take it as a reference to the three days in the tomb. There is no doubt that he is connecting his response to his passion, as indicated by the reference at the end of verse 35.”

[4] Gonzalez Luke 178. “The lament over Jerusalem connects the fate of Jesus with that of those who have gone before him. Some take his claim that he has ‘often’ desired to care for the children of Jerusalem as an indication that he is speaking of his own participation in the ongoing work of God—as the Wisdom of God to which reference has already been made in a similar context in 11:49.”

[5] Joel B. Green The Gospel of Luke The New International Commentary on the New Testament Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997. 534. “Here, though, Jerusalem comes into the limelight not only as Jesus destination but also, more particularly, with reference to its significance for Jesus. As the divine agent of salvation, Jesus must take his message to the center of the Jewish world, Jerusalem. What can he expect by way of response in Jerusalem? The pattern for which Jerusalem is known is that of killing divine messengers….Although it is possible to find in Jesus’ prophetic words over Jerusalem a thread of hope, the motif of judgment is more prominent: As God’s agent, Jesus must carry the divine message to Jerusalem, but Jerusalem kills those whom God sends; on account of this, Jerusalem itself is doomed.”

[6] Green Luke 535. “Given his characterization within the Lukan narrative thus far, we have every reason to imagine that the threat presented by Herod is a real one. As tetrarch of Galilee, Herod first put an end to John’s prophetic ministry by having him imprisoned (3:19-20). Later, we learn, Herod is responsible for beheading John (9:9), and we hear nothing to mitigate Luke’s sweeping characterization of Herod as a doer of evil things (3:20). Nevertheless, the peril represented by Herod’s malevolence is not for Jesus a motivating factor. Instead, he refers to his intention to continue carrying out his ministry as before; although he will be on his way,’ just as the Pharisees had urged, his going is not for the purpose of escaping the hand of Herod. It is, rather, to bring to fruition the divine purpose for his mission.”

[7] A reference to one of the ways to explain the term “Fox” for herod; cf. Green Luke 535-536.

[8] Gonzalez Luke 178. “The image of himself caring for the children of Jerusalem as a mother hen takes care of her brood gives particular significance to his calling Herod a fox. A hen guards her chicks against foxes. Jesus wants to protect the children of Jerusalem not only from what we would consider spiritual or religious ills, but also from the exploitation of those who lord it over them.” And, “There is no doubt that in this passage Jesus bemoans the disobedience of Jerusalem. But Christians should draw the conclusion that Jesus bemoans also the disobedience of his church and its numbers. Us too Jesus wishes to protect like a mother hen—and to protect against all evil, spiritual as well as political.”

[9] Green Luke 539. “Jesus so identifies with God’s care for Jerusalem that he is able to affirm his longstanding yearning to gather together his people for shelter and in restoration. Alas, this desire is not shared by the Jerusalemites.”

[10] Green Luke 538

[11] “Paralyzed” by NF; written by Feuerstein Nate, Profitt Thomas James

[12] I am balancing the idea that it is one thing to unload on your kids everything that is better suited for a friend, mentor, or therapist and acknowledging with your kids that you too have these emotions and concerns.

Posted on March 13, 2022March 10, 2022 by laurenlarkin 5

Be Merciful as God is Merciful

Sermon on Luke 6:27-38

Psalm 37:41-42 But the deliverance of the righteous comes from [God]; [God] is their stronghold in time of trouble. [God] will help them and rescue them; [God] will rescue them from the wicked and deliver them, because they seek refuge in [God].

Introduction

Being told to “love your enemies” is easier said than done. The command is muddled by how we define “enemy” in a way that leans toward those *we* don’t like. It’s definitely hard to override disdain with feelings of love; when we don’t like someone, we just don’t like someone. Enemies also aren’t the people who we can’t forgive because they hurt us once in some way. That’s a real feeling and one I understand very well. Yet, it has its own category. Still, that person is not an enemy, no matter how angry you (still) are.

Who is the enemy?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer defines “enemy” in his text, The Cost of Discipleship, writing on Matthew 5:43-48:

“By our enemies Jesus means those who are quite intractable and utterly unresponsive to our love, who forgive us nothing when we forgive them all, who requite our love with hatred and our service with derision…”[1]
Cost of Discipleship

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing in 1937, was already a target of Hitler’s personal aggression. Two days after Hitler took office on January 30, 1933, Bonhoeffer aired a public radio broadcast in which he offered criticism of the Führer (without naming him directly); this broadcast was cut off before it was finished.[2] The text quoted above came to Bonhoeffer in response to his contemplation of the Sermon on the Mount and how it impacted the believer in terms of Christian-life formation related to “what it means to follow Jesus Christ.”[3] As the church struggled to find it’s voice under the tyranny of Hitler, Bonhoeffer sought to articulate something into the void. For Bonhoeffer he himself in specific and Christians in general were at a “fork in the road.”[4] He and other pastors were under great pressure to capitulate to the oppressive demands and threats of the NSDAP[5] who was strangling and starving all resistance.

All that to say: Bonhoeffer, even with his privilege, wasn’t writing about enemy-love from a secluded and safe distance. He wasn’t instructing people who were fighting for their lives while he grew fat from luxury and comfort. He was in the thick of it, guiding others into it, and teaching those younger about this radical conception of love even for those who are threatening your life and survival.

“Love asks nothing in return, but seeks those who need it. And who needs our love more than those who are consumed with hatred and are utterly devoid of love? Who in other words deserves our love more than our enemy? Where is love more glorified than where she dwells in the midst of her enemies.”[6]
Cost of Discipleship

Who loves the one who bullies them? Who loves the ones who are bent on violence and destruction and death? Who loves those enlisted in this service of a fascist dictator in the Sturmabteilung (SA)[7] and the Schutzstaffel (SS)?[8] But yet—in the face of fear, terror, threat, and very real death—this is what Bonhoeffer was asking from all who would listen to the exhortation of Christ.

Luke 6:27-38

“But to you all I say to those who are listening: Love your enemies, in the same way act toward those who hate you, bless those who are cursing you, offer prayer concerning those who are reviling you. To the one who strikes you on the cheek, present also the other; and from the one who removes your cloak, do not hinder the tunic also. Give to all who are asking you, and from the one who removes things form you do not demand [them] back. And according to the manner you wish people do to you, you do to them likewise. [9]
Luke 6:27-31

When Jesus exhorts “those who are listening” to do what seems like the impossible, he is elevating the call to righteousness.[10] While you might have believed x, or thought y, I say…ↈ.[11] (Something utterly new.) Whatever was assumed, is no longer. Jesus begins by calling attention to an alteration, specifically about “enemies.”

For Jesus, and especially for those who follow him, Love—divine love—is more than a feeling; it’s an action.[12] And not a passive action, but a proactive one; love empowers us to love in radical ways, even to love those who hate us.[13] Love, for Jesus, is done toward others (those least deserving and most in need) in such a way that it reflects what you would want done to your own body and person. In the love-economy of the reign of God: love loves, no matter the status of the other person. [14] In the love-economy of the reign of God not even enemies are the categorical other; for this new community of Christ—the ones who follow after Jesus in person (flesh and bone)[15] and then later by the power of the Holy Spirit—there are only porous boundaries. It is this very community who refuses to declare definitively that another or an other is an “enemy”, undeserving of love, kindness, mercy.[16] Jesus exhorts all those who are listening to love especially the “enemy.” [17]

The reason for the exhortation is embedded in the second half of the text, “And your wages will be many, and you will be children of the highest, because God is gentle on behalf of the ungrateful and wicked people,” (6:35). In other words, love is about mercy, and God is merciful—abundantly merciful. So, as God is merciful and kind,[18] so too are those who follow Jesus, God of very God.[19] The basis of the ethical posture of this new community: do as God does because God’s nature made manifest in God’s Christ is the starting point for any and all discussions of “Christian” ethics.[20] And this Jesus will allow love to cover over and define every space and distance between him and the other so that he can declare that other as beloved even when we’d say otherwise.

Conclusion

In the encounter with God in the event of faith the believer is tossed about and placed in the world in a way that is right-side-up even if it feels completely up-side-down. It is in this new life in God, fueled by the receipt of divine love, and from the magnitude of mercy we proceed (like being (re)born) into the world bearing the image of God in our features and new genetic code marked by love.[21] Because we have been recreated through faith, through our encounter with God in the event of faith, this puts a pause (even if momentary) on our desire to judge others by their actions. We are asked to think of what we would want from someone when we were acting in such a way; thus, we cannot determine who is and who is not to receive our mercy and grace if God does not withhold either from us.[22] If we so desire grace and mercy; are we also able to grant such things to others?

Loving the enemy feels impossible if it means I must hug and kiss and “love-on” the one who is hurting me, wounding me, being violent toward me. It’s just another violent Christian doctrine if it means I must lose myself to become a vacuous vehicle for abuse—this actually isn’t love because love is not vacuous existence lacking self, but active participation in the activity of love.

But maybe I’m radical enough to think it’s possible: because with God all things are possible. If we walk in love because we’re born of Love, then where we are there that space is filled with love. If God is with us, so too is God’s love. It does not mean I now think this enemy is just great, but it may mean I see them with God’s eyes. Maybe, I see a human, stuck in a misconception of the world detrimental to others and to themselves. I might see one who was a mere baby, held tightly by loving arms of a mother; I might even cry for sadness of the pain that caused this one to be as they are right now.

I know by standing in love and stepping forward in love, love goes with me. I do know that—like tiles being flipped over from the side of “not-love” to the side of “love”—the space and distance between me and my enemy is overhauled from not-love to love. (I do not even need to be physically close to my enemy to alter the space between us.) I know that by dropping the term “enemy”, I’ve already lost one; I know that by declaring “beloved” this one is now not my enemy. There is power in words. So, what happens when we use our words to alter the space and distance between us and our enemies? Would we not want that for ourselves? Would we not want someone else to see us as “beloved” and not as “enemy”? When we allow love to redefine our space and distance and location, then anything is really possible because love will always crack open what is to make room for possibility to blossom.

Beloved, you’re loved by God; mercy is new every morning. This divine love and mercy, forever altering the space between God and humanity bent on their own determinations and judgments and gains, is the very love that is glorified among those very children of God at their worst and best. God’s love is most exalted when it does what it loves to do: bringing God’s life and light to the farthest corners of the cosmos, overhauling death to make room for life, declaring beloved those whom were once called “enemy.”

[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer The Cost of Discipleship New York, NY: Macmillan, 1959. 164. Emphasis, mine

[2] Christiane Tietz Theologian of Resistance: The Life and Thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Tran s Victoria J. Barnett. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2016. 36.

[3] Tietz, Resistance, 60.

[4] Tietz, Resistance, 63.

[5] Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; The National Socialist German Worker’s Party.

[6] Bonhoeffer Discipleship 164. Emphasis, mine.

[7] Trans: Storm Division; the original para-military force of the Nazi’s.

[8] Trans: Armed Military/”Protection Squad”

[9] Translation mine unless otherwise noted.

[10] Justo L. Gonzalez Luke Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2010. 94 “The Sermon on the Plain now turns to those who are ready to accept Jesus’ call to a greater righteousness, and is therefore introduced with the words, “But I say to you that listen.” This may also be read as a further explanation of the last beatitude and its parallel woe, which have to do with the hatred of others toward the disciples.” See also: Joel Green (bibliographic material below): “A new beginning in Jesus’ sermon is marked by his words, ‘But I say to you that listen. …’ This should not blind us to the intimate relationship of this section of the address to what has preceded…” 269.

[11] Green Luke 272. “…he is asking people to accept an inversion of the world order, to agree with him that the world order has been inverted, and to act accordingly.”

[12] Gonzalez Luke 94. “Significantly, when one compares this section in Luke to its parallel in Matthew, it is clear that Luke emphasizes the use of possessions, and that he wants to make clear that Christian love is not just a sentiment or a feeling, but also an attitude leading to concrete action: “do good to those who hate you.’”

[13] Green Luke 272. “Love is expressed in doing good – that is, not by passivity in the face of opposition but in proactivity: doing good blessing, praying, and offering the second cheek and the shirt along with the coat.”

[14] Green Luke 272. “The category of “enemies” may include others, however, and not only those who deliberately oppose Jesus’ followers. Because the beggar is habitually defined as outside the circles of companionship of all but other beggars, they would not be classed as “friends” but as “enemies,” outsiders. Love is due them as well, as though they were comrades and kin, and in their case love is expressed in giving.”

[15] Green Luke 271-272. “Jesus’ sermon, then, serves an interpretive function for the narrative as it has developed thus far, casting in positive and constructive terms the worldview and concomitant practices Jesus’ message portends. It is also challenging, summoning its audience(s) to adopt this alterative view of the world and so to measure its practices by its canons.”

[16] Joel B. Green The Gospel of Luke The New International Commentary on the New Testament Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997. 270. “One corollary of Jesus’ message, then, is the construction of a boundary, the delineation of behavior characteristic of those within the community. This is an important observation, since one of the distinguishing marks of his ethic is a worldview that advocates love of enemies. But as a practice, it would appear that love of enemies is designed to mitigate social tensions that, if habitual, would jeopardize the identity of any group. How can this community be distinguished by a practice that dissolves any such distinctions? …in essence, Jesus calls on his followers. To form а community the boundaries of which are porous and whose primary emblematic behavior is its refusal to treat others (even, or especially, those who hate, exclude, revile, and defame you) as though they were enemies.”

[17] Green Luke 272. “Jesus’ words, “Love your enemies,” lack any commonly held ethical base and can only be understood as an admonition to conduct inspired by God’s own graciousness (W 350-36). This is not love for all humanity in general, but more specifically for those who stand in opposition to Jesus’ followers – those whom Luke has already noted in narration (5:27-6:11) and about whom Jesus has already spoken (vv 22-23).”

[18] Green Luke 271. “…in redefining the world for his followers, potential and actual, Jesus posits as its foundation his image of God as merciful Father (6:36) – a base on which he can draft the character of his followers, character that will manifest itself in the demeanor and practices here described.”

[19] Gonzalez Luke 94. This is parallel to Matthew’s ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matt. S:48). While Matthew’s words have often been taken out of context as the basis for a theological claim about God’s ontological perfection, Luke’s leave no room for such an interpretation. The divine perfection that the disciples are to imitate is the perfection of an all-embracing mercy

[20][20] Gonzalez Luke 94. “Furthermore, even though we often tend to think that the basis for the Christian ethics of love is the Golden Rule, in the final analysis the basis for Christian ethics is the very nature and action of God.”

[21] Green Luke 273. “…he incorporates into one utterance the character of this new people and the practices it engenders; theirs will be a countercultural existence indeed for their lives are based on an inverted understanding of their social world.”

[22] Green Luke 275. “Just as the merciful God does not predetermine who will or will not be the recipients of his kindness, so Jesus’ followers must refuse to “judge” – that is, to prejudge, to predetermine who might be the recipients of their graciousness. This is nothing but the command to love one’s enemies restated negatively. In an important sense, Jesus’ instructions are to refuse to act as those scribes and Pharisees had done in 5:27-32, as they calculated beforehand the status of those toll collectors and sinners and thereby excluded them from their circles of social interaction. …Jesus’ followers give freely, without dragging others and especially those in need into the quagmire of never-ending cycles of repayment and liability. And God will lavishly repay them.”

Posted on February 20, 2022February 17, 2022 by laurenlarkin 0

On That Night

Christmas Eve Sermon

Psalm 96: 11-13 Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad; let the sea thunder and all that is in it; let the field be joyful and all that is therein. Then shall all the trees of the wood shout for joy before God when God comes, when God comes to judge the earth. God will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with his truth.

The Heavens Were Silent

Mary was a very pregnant woman that night. She probably looked as she felt…exhausted. As far along as she was, everything ached. I imagine her deep and profound desire to lie down and rest. Anyone passing by on the road and receiving her as she and Joseph roamed looking for lodging, would’ve seen just a pregnant woman. How many other pregnant women were seen that night? How many other babies would be born that night? How many children born before this one? There wasn’t anything special emanating from her. No one in Bethlehem felt the urgency to make sure she was well cared for; no one had the time or the space to make room for her. It’s not that they didn’t love her, I’m sure they did. But that night, there just wasn’t anything to be done but to offer up some meager space among dirty animals, trampled hay, and dirt, in the air of a Bethlehem night.

When the contractions started, the whole entire host of heaven hushed. Not a word was spoken, the entirety of the divine residence of angels and archangels watched with bated breath as this woman did a regular thing: bear her first child, a son…But what the host of heaven knew—as well as Mary and Joseph—was this: this regular body and this regular act of birth were bringing for this not-so-regular child…the son of God, the prince of peace, the one of ancient of days, the true leader of Israel, the humble judge, and the embodiment of divine love for the world. For this child, heaven held its breath as his mother brought him forth out of darkness into light so that he would be the light going into the darkness. This was the longed for, hoped for, yearned for child prayed for by many voices of ages gone by, the voices that cried out from bodies stuck in marginalization, trapped in violence, held down by oppression, and threatened by death. Could Mary feel their ancient cries? Could she feel those bowls upon bowls of prayers poured out on her like glory flowing from on high, covering her body and encouraging her spirit as she endured each contraction for minutes and hours?

God chose this body, this moment, this regularity of being born, to enter the world and the cosmos in physical form to identify with the depth of the pain of the human predicament. God could have shown up and skipped this banal and regular step; God could have come in glory and not in such precarious vulnerability. However, God chose not to skip it but to embrace it, to experience it, to identify with God’s beloved, to stand in unity with the beloved from the beginning of life unto the end. It is this divine child born of Mary, this one who is God of very God, who will stand in solidarity with humanity and change everything.

That night, as Mary labored, heaven was silent.

The World was Still

Yet, it wasn’t just Mary who was walking steadily into that night, into that event, one step at a time while moving toward Bethlehem. Joseph was with her. This regular guy was moving along in his regular life before God intervened and shuffled everything. Now he was moving along with Mary, the one who was to bear the son of God into the world and he…trusted. Trusted that all of this was the work of God. So, he walked. With Mary. With this mother of this child that was not his. Still, he walked with God, humbly, trusting, believing that somehow God would show up.

The many closed doors to decent lodging were discouraging. It wasn’t personal; it was just unfortunate. However, he was eager to get this very pregnant Mary to security, to a place where she could rest[1]…she looks so tired. When the option for the humble estate of wood, straw, and animals came to him, it was a stroke of fortune even if not ideal. Provision. We’ll make this work, at least for tonight. When the contractions started, Joseph knew of one thing to do, rush to find a midwife, or so goes another telling of the birth of Jesus.[2]

And then something happened while he sought this Bethlehemite midwife. Everything seemed to slow down, and the world seemed to stop as if time ceased to exist and all that existed was merely matter in stasis. The cosmos seemed to come to a screeching halt, as if God’s self was slowing it all down in order to set the whole thing in a different direction.

“And I, Joseph, was walking, and yet I was not walking. And I looked up to the vault of heaven and saw it standing still, and in the air, I saw the air seized in amazement, and the birds of heaven were at rest. And I looked down to the earth and I saw a bowl laid there and workers lying around it, with their hands in the bowl. But the ones chewing were not chewing; and the ones lifting up something to eat were not lifting it up; and the ones putting food in their mouths were not putting food into their mouths. But all their faces were looking upward. And I saw sheep being driven along, but the sheep stood still. And the shepherd raised his hand to strike them, but his hand was still raised. And I looked down upon the winter-flowing river and I saw some goat-kids with their mouths over the water but they were not drinking. Then all at once everything returned to its course.”[3]
Protoevangelium of James

When God steps into our timeline and into our space things do not just keep moving as if it’s all normal. Everything stops, stops in its tracks. Time is slowed all the way down and space is parted from itself making room for more and bigger and better. God doesn’t break into our realm, God takes our realm into God’s self. The moment Jesus was born into the world marked the beginning of something new and different, a different reign, a different rule, a different leadership, and a different way of living in the world.

That night, as Joseph sought the midwife, the world stopped.

The Barriers Were Destroyed

That dark night was no different than the other nights. Here they were, once again, tending and guarding their flocks of sheep, chatting here and there to stay awake.[4] This life was quiet, even if deprived and rather dangerous…keeping the flock safe took a lot of work and strength and risk.[5] The census going on caused additional anxiety, fear, and made that heavy blanket of oppression draped over these humble shepherds seem a bit heavier.[6] How many more sheep would they lose from their flocks when the census was over?[7] Against this evil empire they were helpless, more helpless than against a vicious and voracious wolf.[8] Spirits were low that dark night.

Then the angle showed up, out of nowhere. The shepherds were rightly terrified. Here they were, in the dark of night, doing their job, minding their own business and then: FLASH! They were enveloped in the heavenly glory of the Lord. In seconds they went from no ones to some ones, illuminated by a great light, and being addressed by one from the host of heaven…who were they to warrant such attention?[9]

And the Angel said to them,

“Do not be terrified! For behold, I herald good tidings to you of great delight for all people! A savior is brought forth for you today in the city of David who is Christ the Lord! And this will be the sign for you, you will find a newborn child having been wrapped in swaddling clothes and being laid in a manger!”[10]
Luke 2

Before the shepherds found their voices, they were greeted by an army of the host of heaven who joined the angel and praised God, saying: Glory in the highest to God and upon earth peace with humanity of good pleasure! And then, like it began, it was over.

The shepherds had been summoned by God to come into this moment, into this event, into this space…and, that night, they went. The unclean were called; the oppressed were summoned; the meek and meager were beckoned to come and see how good God is, how much God was for them, how much God loved them. When they arrived, they found Mary and Joseph, and the divine newborn child was, as the Angel said, lying in a manger wrapped in swaddling clothes. And here, these unclean shepherds stood in the direct presence of God without having to change, become pure, clean, or right. There was no shame, no condemnation, no guilt, no offerings had to be made, no rituals performed; they just came, looked, and touched the very small and vulnerable foot of God.

That night, when the shepherds arrived, the barriers between clean and unclean were destroyed.

Conclusion

All that had been was now coming undone; the savior, the son of God, was born, surrounded by wood, straw, dirt, animals, an exhausted woman of color, a humbled man, and dirty shepherds. That night God called to God’s self all those who thought they were too far off to hear the call, too far gone to be seen, to unloved to be desired, too nothing to be something…It’s here where we enter the story. As we listen in and look on, we step into that menagerie of humans and animals gazing upon the newborn child. We become a part of those also called to witness this divine event in the world and to encounter God on this night. We are summoned to experience the divine heavenly hush break into the most magnificent chorus of the cosmos. We are provoked to feel God taking the cosmos into God’s self and sending it on the trajectory of love. We are asked to see the rubble of the barriers that once tried to steal from us our belovedness.

That night, while Mary labored, heaven was silent. That night, while Joseph searched for a midwife, the world stopped. That night, when the shepherds arrived, the barriers were destroyed. Because—on that night—God showed up and changed everything forever.

[1] The Protoevangelium of James 17:3-18:1

[2] The Protoevangelium of James 18:1

[3] The Protoevangelium of James 18: 2-11 Trans Lily C Vuong (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1532656173/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_uk52Fb7QPGNMN)

[4] Justo L. Gonzalez Luke Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher, eds. (Louisville, KY: WJK, 2010). 34

[5] Gonzalez Luke 33.

[6] Gonazalez Luke 33, 34

[7] Gonzalez Luke 33

[8] Gonzalez Luke 33

[9] Gonzalez Luke 34

[10] Translation mine

Posted on December 24, 2021December 23, 2021 by laurenlarkin 1

Behold, Christ’s Feet

Psalm 4:1 Answer me when I call, O God, defender of my cause; you set me free when I am hard-pressed; have mercy on me and hear my prayer. (27)

Introduction

I’m not afraid of physical pain—the sore and strain of bones and muscles.[1] As an athlete, one must endure pain to be good. To build muscle, muscle must be torn down and rebuilt, a painful process. I am eager to learn new skills, so, know the demands for discomfort that comes with learning. It’s physically awkward to learn new moves, new postures, new holds. I wasn’t afraid to enter 14 hours of heavy contractions without medication as my son Jack attempted to make his debut on a hot August day in 2008. (With every contraction, Jack hit every bone he could before the midwife called the c-section—his head being too big to pass through my structure.) I’m that ridiculous person who says: no pain, no gain. If something is too easy, I immediately think: what am I doing wrong. Always looking for the next level because, to quote Will-I-Am as Pedro in the animated movie Rio: “Come on! This ain’t the level. The next level is the level.”

However, throw in a sudden shot of mental anguish and everything changes. While I won’t flee from physical pain, mental anguish is something altogether more painful to me. The mind takes over and anxiety surges in the body. Chaos starts to swirl in my mind and around me; my refuge of safety—my mind palace—is under siege. I am ushered into the crevasse opening under my feet, threatening to swallow me. Trying to fight against the discomfort (working, reading, running, tasking, scrolling, etc.) or pretending that everything is just fine (#fakeittillyoumakeit), makes it worse. The harder I fight and ignore, the worse the discomfort gets. I am no match to resist this Apollyon[2] seeking to destroy me on this journey, eager to drive me to the brink and edge of myself into oblivion.

Luke 24:36-48

Now, as they were saying these things, Jesus himself stood in the middle of them and said to them, “Peace to you.” But being terrified and becoming full of fear, they were thinking they were looking at a spirit. And Jesus said to them, “Why are you disturbed and why are thoughts coming up in your hearts? Experience my hands and my feet that I am[3] myself. Touch me and experience that a spirit has not flesh and bones just as you behold me having.” Then after saying this he showed them [his] hands and feet.
Luke 24:36-40

Luke is clear about the mental anguish of the disciples when Jesus appears in the middle of them.[4] He is clear: Jesus showing up didn’t immediately bring the comfort we might think/hope it would. The language Luke uses is thematically like the language Mark used to describe the women arriving at an open tomb on Easter morning. Divine movement in human time and space is terrifying even if it’s good.[5],[6] Divine activity here always alters reality as we know it—there’s nothing comforting about this. When God moves, things will change; we don’t like change, especially when it destroys what we know to be true. The tomb is opened; the women were terrified and seized with fear. The Crucified Christ shows up; the men are terrified and full of fear.

Jesus declares: Peace to you! Yet, fear and trembling persisted. Even if this declaration of peace was understood as the shalom that is peace with God thus salvation, it wasn’t all that the disturbed disciples needed.[7] These men were in mental anguish; speaking “peace” wasn’t enough. Jesus recognizes this. His response? He names what is going with these men: why are you disturbed? Why are reasonings coming up in your heart? I am myself![8]In other words, I see you and feel you. Jesus is truly there with them; in solidarity with them. But calling a thing what it is isn’t all Jesus does.

He knows something else must happen to relieve the disturbedness. Behold my hands; gaze upon my feet; see for yourself that I am who I am and that I am here with you! These terrified people needed to touch Jesus to know he was real. It wasn’t enough for Jesus to speak peace; he needed to show them his wounded hands and feet. He stood among them and held out his hands, experience the holes from the nails that held me to the cross; gaze at death’s feeble attempt to keep God and my beloved apart; behold, not even death can exile you from me. And they touched him. When they did, their terror and fear turned to doubt because of joy (v.41); this was too good to be true. Doubt still existed, but it’s source was the good news they felt with their hands as they touched the body of Jesus.[9] They reached out with trembling hands, like the shepherds did back at Christmas, and touched the very flesh of God and were not reduced to dust but into new life. The Lord is Risen!

Conclusion

The only way the disciples moved from their fear and terror at Jesus’s presence was through and not around. So it is with us. The only way for me to pass through my mental anguish, my fear and terror, my panic and anxiety is to sit and feel, to face and acknowledge, to look it in the eyes, touch it, call it for what it is, and exist there. Referring to the EnneaThought for this past Friday, “…if we stay present to our discomfort, we will also feel something else arising—something more real, capable, sensitive, and exquisitely aware of ourselves and of our surroundings.”[10] The beginning of release comes in facing the reality of what is and moving through and from there; this becomes our sure foundation: embracing the truth, naming the feelings, and admitting our weakness and problem.

When Jesus walked the earth, he overturned condemning material systems birthed from human judgment. In his resurrected material[11] life, Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, flips time and space—like he did tables in the temple—and brings with him the women and men whom he encounters into the divine reign. Christ’s resurrected material presence on earth among people indicates that God’s reign is not merely spiritual, but physical, too; this (all) is God’s good creation.[12]

The rest is in making our home where we live and standing in solidarity with our neighbors rather than escaping it through fighting against Apollyon and turning blind eyes.

The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out
You left me in the dark
And no dawn, no day, I’m always in this twilight
In the shadow of your heart
I took the stars from my eyes, an then I made a map
And knew that somehow I could find my way back
Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too
So I stayed in the darkness with you[13]
Florence and the Machine “Cosmic Love”

The material presence of Christ with the disciples makes it impossible for us to reduce problems and their solutions of our world to the spiritual. In other words, our presence in the world toward our neighbor must be more than “thoughts and prayers” or the ludicrous assertion people should pull themselves out of their suffering and oppression by their own bootstraps. We must look at the violence in our country and call it what it is: life denying and anti-human. To quote the biblical scholar, Justo Gonzalez, “The Lord who broke the bonds of death calls his followers to break the bonds of injustice and oppression,”[14] that which causes death. The material presence of Christ with people after his resurrection is a sure sign that, to quote womanist theologian, The Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas of Union Seminary,

The resurrection asserts the sanctity of human life as it overcomes all the forces that would deny it. The resurrection in effect makes plane the ‘wrongness’ of the crucifixion, and thus of all crucifying realities. It shows that death does not have the last word. [15]
The Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground

In our encounter with God in the resurrected Christ of Easter in the event of faith, we are made into new people in the world. In our new life in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit we are called to love God with our whole selves and to also love our neighbor as ourselves. In this encounter we are remade and reshaped (the product of repentance[16]), we will be “wholly transformed” through death into new life to conform to the image of Christ in the world.[17] If we think this means merely speaking peace and not attempting to perform this divine shalom into the world, then Jesus is still in the tomb, and we follow phantoms.

But we don’t follow a phantom; we follow the materially risen Lord Jesus Christ who fully affirms life (for all people, and especially the oppressed and suffering people[18]). Hope is not lost; faith is not abandoned. Prayer informs our praxis, rendering the space of our activity divine space. We are indwelled with the holy spirit, God of very God. Where there is death, we bring life; where there is midnight, we shine light; where there is hunger, we bring food; where there is terror and fear we, the beloved, bring comfort to the beloved. Our hands extend to the downtrodden and we lift up, behold Christ’s hand. Our feet stand in solidarity with black and brown bodies threatened at every turn; behold Christ’s feet.

[1] I’m not including here physical pain from chronic illness. I group that under mental anguish because of the toll it takes on the mind and body. Also, as someone who has not suffered with chronic illness, I cannot speak to it. I wanted to add this here so people know I’m aware of the physical pain of Chronic Illness.

[2] Reference to the antagonist in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress

[3] The εγω ειμι here is a loaded term, so I emphasized it. The Greek reads “…εγω ειμι αυτος” thus a literal translation would be “I, I am myself.” Whenever you see the personal pronoun with the verb in Greek there’s a needed emphasis. I also think Luke is intentional with the wording and order; the great I AM is with them. God is with the Beloved.

[4] Gonzalez Luke Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds. Ay Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. Louisville, KY: WJK, 2010. 279 “The theological emphasis of this passage lies on the true, physical resurrection of Jesus. The disciples think that what they are seeing may be his ghost, a story parallel to the reaction of other disciples in Acts when Peter returns to them unexpectedly.”

[5] Joel B. Green TNICNT The Gospel of Luke Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans 1997. 852 “…the Evangelist [Luke] places a premium on ‘seeing.’…Initial points of contact with accounts of angelic appearances signal the wonder of this moment, while points of contrast indicate the reality of Jesus’ resurrection. …Luke’s narrative affirms a resurrected Jesus over against these other options for the afterlife current in the Hellenistic world.”

[6] Green 855, In re Luke’s use of “Joy” “What they were experiencing was simply too good to be true.”

[7] Green 854, “Within the Third Gospel, ‘peace’ is metonymic for ‘salvation,’ so that, in this co-text, Jesus’ greeting takes on an enlarged meaning. The Emmaus travelers imagined that his rejection and crucifixion had rendered Jesus incapable of serving as Israel’s redeemer; here, following his death, though, he communicates or transmits continue salvation to those gathered.”

[8] Green 854-5, “…Jesus is now represented as alive beyond the grave as an embodied person. Jesus’ affirmation is emphatic—‘it is I myself!’ ‘It is really me!’—intimating continuity between these phases of Jesus’ life, before crucifixion and after resurrection.”

[9] Green 855, “Nestled between these two demonstrations of materiality is a transparent indication that such exhibitions are insufficient for producing the desired effects This is consistent with the emphasis through ch. 24 on the inherent ambiguity of ‘facts’ and, thus, the absolute necessity of interpretation. Not even controvertible evidence of Jesus’ embodied existence is capable of producing faith; resolution will come only when scriptural illuminate is added to material data.”

[10]The Wisdom of the Enneagram, 37

[11] Gonzalez Luke 279, “The Jesus who repeatedly ate with his disciples, with sinners, with publicans, wand with Pharisees now eats his last meal before leaving his disciples in the ascension. He does this in order to prove that he is not a just a vision or a ghost, that he has really conquered death.”

[12] Gonzalez Luke 279, “The one whose life the church shares in Word and Sacrament is not a ghost or a disembodied spirit. He is the risen Lord. Those who serve him do not serve a moral or religious principle, nor just the natural spiritual urges of humankind; they serve one like themselves, yet Lord of all.”

[13] Florence and the Machine “Cosmic Love”

[14] Gonzalez Luke 280, “And, because his resurrection is not a merely spiritual matter, they cannot limit their service to purely spiritual matters. The Lord who showed his resurrection to his disciples by eating with them invites his followers to show his resurrection to the world by feeding the hungry.”

[15] Kelly Brown Douglas Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2013. 187 Here’s the full paragraph for context: “The resurrecting power of God is made fully manifest in the defeat of the ultimate power of evil represented by the cross. The resurrection is God’s definitive response to the crucifying realities. It clarifies the essential character of God’s power—a power that values life. The resurrection of the one who died such a hideous and ignominious death firmly established that God does not in any way sanction the suffering of human being. The resurrection asserts the sanctity of human life as it overcomes all the forces that would deny it. The resurrection in effect makes plane the ‘wrongness’ of the crucifixion, and thus of all crucifying realities. It shows that death does not have the last word.”

[16] Green 858, “Repentance’ will be a key term describing the appropriate response to the offer of salvation in Acts, and connotes the (re)alignment of one’s life—that is, dispositions and behaviors—toward God’s purpose.”

[17] Green 854, “‘Heart’ has already been used in vv 25 and 32, reminding Luke’s audience of the importance in these sense of the need for the inner commitments to these persons to be reshaped in light of the resurrection of Jesus. They must be wholly transformed—in disposition and attitude, cognition and affect, as well as practices and behaviors—but they continue to lack the categories for rendering this new experience of Jesus in a meaningful way. As with Jesus’ companions on the road to Emmaus, they are obtuse, slow of heart (v 25).”

[18] Douglas Stand Your Ground 188 “What the resurrection points to…is not the meaning of Jesus’s death, but of his life…The resurrection of Jesus thus solidified God’s commitment to the re restoration o life for the ‘crucified class’ of people. It reveals that there are ‘no principalities or power’ that can frustrate or foil God’s power to overcome the crucifying death in the world that not only targets but also creates a ‘crucified class’ of people To restore to life those whose bodies are the particular targets of the world’s violence is to signal the triumph over crucifying violence and death itself….The crucifixion-resurrection event points to the meaning found in Jesus’ life, not his death. By understanding he resurrection in light of the cross, we know that crucifying realities do not have the last word, and, thus, cannot take away the value of one’s life. The meaning of one’s life, in other words, is not found in death and is not vitiated by it.”

Posted on April 18, 2021April 18, 2021 by laurenlarkin 0

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Tag: Justo Gonzalez

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